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Originally Posted by HarryT
But it's important to note that (as indeed the article states) the final 10 short stories (those contained in "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes") are still protected by copyright in the US, although they are in the public domain in most other countries.
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Right, but the bigger issue here is the use of the characters, which is what they were claiming - that the characters and earlier works should be off limits because some of the stories which present them as "round characters" were still under copyright protection.
They've apparently applied for trademark protection for the characters in the UK, though it remains to be seen how that will go. Though it's not unusual for fictional characters to be granted such protection, I don't know if it's been attempted in this way before - claiming protection for the brand that they didn't actually create, that's largely been marketed by others in its history, and right on the heels of a copyright dustup, which makes it look like they are attempting to use trademarks as a form of copyright extension.