Are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson still under a legal cloak (or cape, if you will) of copyright law? The Supreme Court may have to solve that mystery, to decide a new legal plea filed Tuesday by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Scottish creator of that fictional detective and his far less colorful companion.
The estate has been attempting to block a California lawyer and Holmes fancier, Leslie S. Klinger, from publishing a new book about the two characters unless he is willing to get a license from the estate and pay a fee. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the estate’s copyright claim, calling it “quixotic.” The new filing at the Court, including the Seventh Circuit’s ruling as an appendix, has been docketed as 14A47, and can be read here.
At this point, the Doyle estate is only seeking a delay of the Seventh Circuit’s ruling, until it can file a petition for review of the decision itself. The Seventh Circuit refused a stay on July 9. But to deal with the application, the Court will have to decide whether the legal claim has any chance of ultimately succeeding and decide who might be hurt if a stay is, or is not, issued..
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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Are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson still under a legal cloak (or cape, if you will) of copyright law? The Supreme Court may have to solve that mystery, to decide a new legal plea filed Tuesday by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Scottish creator of that fictional detective and his far less colorful companion.
