Thread: Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?
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Old 03-21-2013, 05:22 AM   #16027
pdurrant
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
I'm a little puzzled by this. Conan Doyle died in 1930; he's therefore in the life+70 public domain. Nobody needs anyone's "permission" to write a Sherlock Holmes story, as the enormous number of new Holmes stories illustrates. What was this "permission" that Mr. Horowitz received, I wonder?
It's the weird US copyright laws. In the US about 10 of the short stories are still in copyright.

There is currently a legal case going on to decide just this issue: Whether anyone needs permission, even in the US, to write/publish/produce a Sherlock Holmes story.

It's like the Happy Birthday copyright. IMO it's legal extortion, because for any individual it's cheaper to pay the licence fee than to take it to court.
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