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Sherlock Holmes Finally In the Public Domain In the US
ferrisoxide.com writes "As reported on the Australian ABC news website, film-makers in the US are finally free to work on Sherlock Holmes stories without paying a licencing free to the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle after a ruling by Judge Ruben Castillo. A quirk of U.S. copyright law kept 10 stories out of the public domain, on the basis that these stories were continuously developed. In his ruling Judge Castillo opined that only the "story elements" in the short stories published after 1923 were protected and that everything else in the Holmes canon was "free for public use" — including the characters of Holmes and Watson.
Holmes scholar Leslie Klinger, who challenged the estate, celebrated the ruling.
'Sherlock Holmes belongs to the world,' Mr Klinger said in a statement posted on his Free Sherlock website.
IANAL, but the ruling of Judge Castillo that "adopting Conan Doyle's position would be to extend impermissibly the copyright of certain character elements of Holmes and Watson beyond their statutory period," is surely going to have implications across U.S. copyright law. Mark Twain must be twisting and writhing in his grave."
I smell a lot of vile and unsavory SyFy productions ramping up with this ruling.
"SyFy, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."
"Watson, come here, I want you!".
No the US law applies because a Georgian Princess bought out the other English heirs of the Scottish author who then assigned it to Swiss to manage it.Later when the swiss started skimming off the top, she then sold the whole thing off.The person who purchased it was American but the estate was managed by another Swiss man. Due to a quirk in the US law, the british (dis)inherited tried to reclaim the property, but were conned by a texas lawyer who sent the notices to a non existent address in Switzerland instead of the correct address in US or Switzerland. So the ownership of the estate remains in the US. Hence US law applies.
I did not make any of this up .
Is there any other way?
Doyle has been dead since 1930. That means that Sherlock Holmes has been in the public domain in Scotland since 2000. If something is PD in the country of origin, it is PD to all Berne signatories. That's part of how the CTEA was sold to the US public, as our authors would be 'disadvantaged' if we kept a shorter term.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I've heard that the definition of a Scottish gentleman is one who knows how to play the bagpipes, but refrains from doing so.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
No, according to US copyright law (17 USC 104(c)), the Berne Convention has no effect in the US.
And this isn't odd; copyright treaties are typically not self-executing. They obligate the various treaty states to enact domestic legislation that brings them into compliance with the treaty, but do not serve as copyright laws themselves. In addition, in the US, all treaties stand at an equal level with ordinary federal legislation, and a last-in-time rule dictates which trumps in the event of an irreconcilable conflict. This means that Congress is not bound to adhere to treaties, and can refuse to pass laws that treaties require, and can even pass laws that directly contradict the treaty. This may embarrass the executive branch, and may cause problems for the US in its foreign relations, but sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.
A fun example is WTO Dispute 160, the gist of which is that certain copyright exceptions in US copyright law violate our treaty obligations, a complaint was brought against the US by the Irish, the US lost the case, and we've never bothered to comply by changing our laws in the decade-plus since we lost.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.