moorereppion

February 14, 2013

A civil action was filed today in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate by Sherlock Holmes scholar Leslie S. Klinger. Klinger seeks to have the Court determine that the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are no longer protected by federal copyright laws and that writers, filmmakers, and others are free to create new stories about Holmes, Watson, and others of their circle without paying license fees to the current owners of the remaining copyrights.

Back in 2007 when we were working on The Complete Dracula, Leslie S, Klinger’s’ New Annotated Dracula was a truly invaluable resource. We were lucky enough to be put in touch with Les by our friend Brian J. Showers, and he was good enough to advise us on certain things, discuss bits of Dracula-lore, and so on. When we embarked upon writing The Trial of Sherlock Holmes the following year, Mr. Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes proved equally invaluable, and again, Les was generous enough to help and advise us (even providing us with a copy of Redmond’s long out of print essay The Tin Dispatch Box:  A Compendium of the Unpublished Cases of Sherlock Holmes which we made good use of). All of which goes to prove that Leslie S. Klinger is A) a great expert on both Dracula and Holmes, and B) that he is a genuinely nice guy.

So the, why has Les seen fit to file a civil action against the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate?

Klinger says that the litigation came about because he and Laurie R. King, best-selling author of the “Mary Russell” series of mysteries that also feature Sherlock Holmes, were co-editing a new book called “In the Company of Sherlock Holmes.”  This collection of stories by major mystery/sci-fi/fantasy authors inspired by the Holmes tales, is to be published by Pegasus Books. “The Conan Doyle Estate contacted our publisher,” says Klinger, “and implied that if the Estate wasn’t paid a license fee, they’d convince the major distributors not to sell the book. Our publisher was, understandably, concerned, and told us that the book couldn’t come out unless this was resolved.

“It is true that some of Conan Doyle’s stories about Holmes are still protected by the U.S. copyright laws. However, the vast majority of the stories that Conan Doyle wrote are not. The characters of Holmes, Watson, and others are fully established in those fifty ‘public-domain’ stories. Under U.S. law, this should mean that anyone is free to create new stories about Holmes and Watson.

“This isn’t the first time the Estate has put pressure on creators,” Klinger adds. “It is the first time anyone has stood up to them. In the past, many simply couldn’t afford to fight or to wait for approval, and have given in and paid off the Estate for ‘permission.’ I’m asking the Court to put a permanent stop to this kind of bullying. Holmes and Watson belong to the world, not to some distant relatives of Arthur Conan Doyle.”

You can find more info about the case (currently ongoing) at free-sherlock.com and you can listen to an interview with Les on the Baker Street Babes podcast #38 (embedded player below).