The Sherlock Holmes Copyright Case

Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd., 755 F.3d 496 (7th Cir. 2014)

The Seventh Circuit recently issued its decision in Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd., holding that the copyright protection of a fictional character cannot be extended beyond the expiration of the copyright for a work in which the character first appeared just because the author altered the character in a subsequent work that still enjoyed copyright protection.

The case concerned the Sherlock Holmes stories authored by Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle published fifty-six Sherlock Holmes stories and four Sherlock Holmes novels between 1887 and 1927. 755 F.3d at 497. Except for ten stories published between 1923 and 1927, all of the stories and novels are now in the public domain. Id. Thus, they can be copied and sold without a license from Doyle's estate. Several years ago, plaintiff-appellee Leslie Klinger, believing that he did not need a license, co-edited an anthology that contained works by various