Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
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Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
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Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#2Fortunately, the estate appeal was rejected. If adding any new (short) story can make a character "more rounded", it is basically a very cheap way to extend the copyrights ad vitam aeternam.
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#3I guess it's not surprising that Sherlock Holmes couldn't pull a Mickey Mouse. The AC Doyle estate should've greased the wheels of commerce with some major dollars.
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#4The problem with such cases is that -- as far as I'm aware (IANAL) -- concepts like characters, inventions (e.g. hyperdrive) etc are not covered by any of the existing laws that handle creative monopolies (i.e. what is generally known, incorrectly, as "intellectual property"). Copyright covers the specific fixed representations (e.g. words on paper) and not ideas and concepts, while other laws like patents or trademarks also seem unfit here.
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#5Fortunately, the estate appeal was rejected. If adding any new (short) story can make a character "more rounded", it is basically a very cheap way to extend the copyrights ad vitam aeternam .
The cynic in me things that this idea is probably the reason why Disney have been so aggressive about using their oldest characters in the last few years. E.g. Steamboat Willy in opening sequences, and the short film before Frozen.
Even if they fail to extend the original copyrights, there are other potential "loopholes" to making it harder to reuse these characters:
The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigger the minefield becomes in terms of sticking to the depictions that enters/have entered public domain. And they may also be going for making it harder to make any use of some of the imagery without running into trademark law as well.
In this case, the author "only" had to deal with the threats and the small minefield of avoiding character aspects revealed in the last 10 Sherlock stories, and so presumably had a reasonably simple task. Perhaps the Arthur Conan Doyle estate now wishes they'd pursued a more aggressive licensing strategy aimed at creating a bigger minefield..
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#6The problem with such cases is that -- as far as I'm aware (IANAL) -- concepts like characters, inventions (e.g. hyperdrive) etc are not covered by any of the existing laws that handle creative monopolies (i.e. what is generally known, incorrectly, as "intellectual property"). Copyright covers the specific fixed representations (e.g. words on paper) and not ideas and concepts, while other laws like patents or tradema…
Couldn't the estate trademark Sherlock Holmes' name?
Didn't Disney eventually trademark Mickey Mouse?
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#7The problem with such cases is that -- as far as I'm aware (IANAL) -- concepts like characters, inventions (e.g. hyperdrive) etc are not covered by any of the existing laws that handle creative monopolies (i.e. what is generally known, incorrectly, as "intellectual property"). Copyright covers the specific fixed representations (e.g. words on paper) and not ideas and concepts, while other laws like patents or tradema…
Not a lawyer either. Characters may be protected by copyright, in as much as their manifestations in writing, or visual depictions etc. is protected by copyright, and copyright includes the right to control derivative works.
So if I describe a young boy that goes to wizard school in a book, then that idea is not protected by copyright, but if the way I describe him makes him similar enough to Harry Potter, I would risk that a court would determine that the character is a derivative work and find copyright infringement.
Trademark can also apply, if the characters have been used in association with products, but not generally for the work itself.
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#8Fortunately, the estate appeal was rejected. If adding any new (short) story can make a character "more rounded", it is basically a very cheap way to extend the copyrights ad vitam aeternam .
The cynic in me things that this idea is probably the reason why Disney have been so aggressive about using their oldest characters in the last few years. E.g. Steamboat Willy in opening sequences, and the short film before Frozen. Even if they fail to extend the original copyrights, there are other potential "loopholes" to making it harder to reuse these characters: The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigge…
But this ruling will create a precedent that will make it harder to justify, that Sherlock Holmes entered the domain public and Mickey Mouse should not, although I am pretty sure that Walt Disney's lawyers are already carefully preparing their argument for the next few hundred years of protection extension.
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cynic in me things that this idea is probably the reason why Disney have been so aggressive about using their oldest characters in the last few years. E.g. Steamboat Willy in opening sequences, and the short film before Frozen. Even if they fail to extend the original copyrights, there are other potential "loopholes" to making it harder to reuse these characters: The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigge…
But this ruling will create a precedent that will make it harder to justify, that Sherlock Holmes entered the domain public and Mickey Mouse should not, although I am pretty sure that Walt Disney's lawyers are already carefully preparing their argument for the next few hundred years of protection extension.
I am actually not for Mickey entering public domain, he is still representative of a very active and well known company. There are certain characters in the Disney domain that would be wholly out of place anywhere else.
Whereas book characters from long dead authors are a whole different matter. While I think estates should be able to protect the rights of the estate for a period of time the fact that no new content can be created by the author should discount extending the protection. Now interesting cases do arise where direct descendant or designated authors do keep stories and characters progressing, Dune and Pern come to mind.
So where the association is very strong with an active entitle I say let them keep it, where there are degrees of separation, like book examples, then perhaps one generation?
Re: Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cynic in me things that this idea is probably the reason why Disney have been so aggressive about using their oldest characters in the last few years. E.g. Steamboat Willy in opening sequences, and the short film before Frozen. Even if they fail to extend the original copyrights, there are other potential "loopholes" to making it harder to reuse these characters: The more Disney uses variations of them, the bigge…
But this ruling will create a precedent that will make it harder to justify, that Sherlock Holmes entered the domain public and Mickey Mouse should not, although I am pretty sure that Walt Disney's lawyers are already carefully preparing their argument for the next few hundred years of protection extension.
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