Doyle Estate hits back in Sherlock Holmes case
The heirs to Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have said it will be “almost impossible” that a forthcoming book based on the detective will not infringe its copyright despite two US courts ruling the opposite.
The Conan Doyle Estate told WIPR it would be “extremely difficult and perhaps impossible” that a book by author Leslie Klinger would avoid using copyrighted material.
A spokesman for the Estate was speaking to WIPR days after the US Supreme Court refused to suspend a lower court judgment which said the character was in the public domain and that Klinger was free to publish a new book on the famous British detective.
The Estate is planning a full appeal against the decision but wanted the Supreme Court to stay the judgment to stall the book’s publication.
The case began last year when Klinger attempted to publish an anthology called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes.
After the Estate contacted publishing company Pegasus to ask for a licensing agreement, it refused and said it wanted to use US copyright law to determine whether it could represent the character freely.
US law states that works published prior to 1923 are in the public domain, meaning characters included in them could theoretically be represented in later works by different authors.
Most of Doyle’s work is already in the public domain but ten short stories, published after 1923, continue to have protection until 2022.
Both the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the claims that the entire Sherlock Holmes collection should be protected as a result.
“The ten copyrighted Sherlock Holmes stories contain much of the emotional and human dimension of the famous character.
“We continue to believe that the Seventh Circuit erred when it split from all other courts in the country and declined to require Mr Klinger to come forward with his finished book for actual comparison to the protected aspects of Sherlock Holmes’s character,” the spokesman said.
He added: "We appreciate the court's consideration of our request as well as the rarity with which the Court grants a stay pending appeal.”
“We look forward to presenting our arguments in full when we file the Estate's certiorari petition in the coming months,” the Estate added.
