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Sherlock Holmes and the Copyright Tangle
spagiola passes along a New York Times piece on the copyright travails of Sherlock Holmes. "At his age [123 years], Holmes would logically seem to have entered the public domain. But not only is the character still under copyright in the United States, for nearly 80 years he has also been caught in a web of ownership issues so tangled that Professor Moriarty wouldn't have wished them upon him."
Sherlock Holmes on Project Gutenberg
Mr. Lellenberg said that Sherlock Holmes remains under copyright protection in the United States through 2023, and that any new properties involving the detective “definitely should” be licensed by the Conan Doyle estate. Asked about a recent Red Bull television commercial that features a cartoon Holmes and Watson, Mr. Lellenberg said he had not seen it. “Very interesting,” he said. “News to me.”
He then twirled his mustache, petted the Persian cat on his lap, raised an eyebrow, tilted his head, rubbed his hands together, and said: "release the lawyers!"
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
So you create copyright works in country A, and when that expires you then renew your copyright in country B? After that expires will they just transfer it yet again to another country and extend it yet again? Since all of these countries have [evil] trade treaties copyright in one is copyright in all....
Copyright is seriously out of control and I point the finger squarely at the US for creating this greedy flawed system...
Basically, nobody wants to give up rights to it because they can make money from it.
Not "Basically", but rather "Elementary"!
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
The article doesn't explain precisely why it's still under copyright, except that it was renewed in 1981 after falling into the public domain, as permitted by the Copyright Act of 1976. But why hasn't it fallen back into the public domain again? Looking through this chart, I can't find any combination of circumstances that would allow an 1887 work, whose author died in 1930, to remain in copyright until 2023.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If IP owners are going to be such absolute children about this, maybe we should revert back to the old law.
It was once legally agreed upon that 14+14 years was an adequate amount of time to commercially exploit your copyright. With today's digital distribution and rapid-fire publishing houses, does it really need to be a HUNDRED years?
It doesn't fail with them. They just don't care. They get paid to write more long-lasting, restrictive copyright laws, so they do it. All those "for the good of culture" arguments are just smokes and mirrors, so it's less obvious.
If copyright is extended jobs are lost. You don't need to hire people to create new stuff because you can still earn money from the ancient stuff.
Taking a public domain character and inserting them into a story, or being forced to come up with something new - and possibly better - instead?
Dunno. Let's look at Disney classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and compare it with one of their latest, Bolt.
You can Trademark a character, but you can't Copyright him.
You can Copyright "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (which is in the Public Domain), but "Sherlock Holmes" isn't Copyrightable.
Note that much of the Holmes canon is in the Public Domain, since it was originally published in the 19th century. There are only a few Conan Doyle stories (and a great many movies and Holmes stories by other authors) that were Copyrighted late enough to still be under Copyright.
Note also that owning the Trademark for Holmes allows one to play goalkeeper for anyone who wants to do an original Holmes work (and extract money in the process), but it doesn't actually allow one to control the republishing of the original Holmes stories from the 19th Century.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"