Associated PressSherlock Holmes as portrayed by Frederic Dorr Steele.
In the more than 125 years since he first appeared, Sherlock Holmes has popped up everywhere from fan fiction set in outer space to screen adaptations like CBS’s “Elementary,” set in contemporary Manhattan. But now, following a legal ruling, the deerstalker-wearing detective is headed to another destination: the public domain.
A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works that Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law, and can therefore be freely used by others without paying any licensing fee to the writer’s estate.
The ruling came in response to a civil complaint filed in February by Leslie S. Klinger, the editor of the three-volume, nearly 3,000-page “New Annotated Sherlock Holmes” and a number of other Holmes-related books. The complaint stemmed from “In the Company of Sherlock Holmes,” a collection of new Holmes stories written by different authors and edited by Mr. Klinger and Laurie R. King, herself the author of a mystery series featuring Mary Russell, Holmes’s wife.
Mr. Klinger and Ms. King had paid a $5,000 licensing fee for a previous Holmes-inspired collection. But in the complaint, Mr. Klinger said that the publisher of “In the Company of Sherlock Holmes,” Pegasus Books, had declined to go forward after receiving a letter from the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd., a business entity organized in Britain, suggesting that the estate would prevent the new book from being sold by Amazon, Barnes & Noble and “similar retailers” unless it received another fee.
Chief Judge Rubén Castillo of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, stated that elements introduced in Holmes stories published after 1923 — such as the fact that Watson played rugby for Blackheath, or had a second wife — remain under copyright in the United States. (All of the Holmes stories are already in the public domain in Britain.)
But the judge rejected what he called the estate’s “novel legal argument” that the characters remain under copyright because, it claimed, they were not truly completed until Conan Doyle published his last Holmes story in 1927.
“Klinger and the public may use the pre-1923 story elements without seeking a license,” the judge wrote.
Associated PressArthur Conan Doyle
The decision comes at a moment when Holmes is a newly lucrative commercial property, thanks to the show “Elementary,” the BBC series “Sherlock” (which is shown in the United States as part of PBS’s “Masterpiece”) and the Warner Bros. movie franchise; all three have entered into licensing agreements with the estate.
The BBC declined to comment on the effect of the decision on its agreement for “Sherlock,” whose third season begins on PBS on Jan. 19. Warner Bros. had no comment on the ruling. A CBS spokesman said, “The decision will not affect CBS’s production or distribution of ‘Elementary.’ ”
Benjamin W. Allison, a lawyer for the Conan Doyle Estate, said that it was exploring an appeal but asserted that the ruling did not imperil any existing licensing agreements or the estate’s separate claims under trademark law.
Mr. Allison also reiterated the estate’s argument that the “highly delineated” Holmes and Watson characters depend on elements introduced in the post-1923 stories, which remain protected, and which he said went beyond simple matters like Watson’s athletic career.
“Those stories are set at a variety of points in Sherlock’s fictional life, not just the end of his life,” he said. “They develop the two men’s characters in ways that almost any use of the characters depends on.”
Mr. Klinger said he planned to go ahead with “In the Company of Sherlock Holmes,” which he said carefully avoided any post-1923 elements. And he praised the ruling for opening the way for other creators, many of whom had previously paid fees to the estate but had rallied to Mr. Klinger’s cause under the Twitter hashtag #FreeSherlock.
“Sherlock Holmes belongs to the world, and this ruling clearly establishes that,” he said. “People want to celebrate Holmes and Watson, and now they can do that without fear.”
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 27, 2013
An earlier version of this post gave an incorrect title for a three-volume collection edited by Leslie S. Klinger. It is “The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes," not “The Complete Annotated Sherlock Holmes.”