Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The Man Who's Trying to Free Sherlock Holmes


By on March 08, 2013 - Bloomberg Businessweek

Leslie Klinger refuses to take his own legal advice. “I work in tax and estate law, and I always tell my clients, don’t file a lawsuit for personal reasons. They’re money pits. Even if you win, you’ll wind up spending a fortune,” he says.

But in addition to being a lawyer, Klinger is one of the preeminent Sherlock Holmes scholars; he writes books and scholarly articles on the hyperobservant London detective, including the three-volume Norton anthology of the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, published as the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes in 2004 and 2005. So when Klinger decided to sue the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle literary estate over what he believes to be a wrongful assertion of copyright, he knew it wasn’t going to win him any money. This time, Klinger is fighting for what he loves best: a literary figure famous for not loving anybody at all.

In the U.S., the Conan Doyle estate owns the copyright to the last 10 stories that Doyle published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1927. They’re some of Doyle’s later work and do not include Doyle’s most famous Holmes mysteries, such as A Scandal In Bohemia or The Hound of the Baskervilles. “They’re not the most popular stories,” says Klinger. “You might not even remember them, if you’ve read them at all.”

Doyle’s other Sherlock Holmes stories were written earlier and have since entered the public domain. But the estate says that because it retains the copyright to some stories (set to expire in 2023), anyone who wants to write a book, film a movie, or make a thrilling TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch has to obtain a license for the use of Sherlock Holmes, Watson, James Moriarty, or any other Doyle character. (In Britain and Canada, the Sherlock Holmes stories are all in the public domain.)

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