Fascinating NYT article on Sherlock Holmes copyright

[nick101]

Can't beat this for a quote

“It is,” said Jon Lellenberg, [...] “enough to make lawyers’ eyes roll up in their heads. Even British lawyers.”

[WT Sharpe]

Makes me wish we could all move to China, write Sherlock Holmes books, produce Sherlock Holmes movies, and post all our work on the Internet under assumed names!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Makes me wish we could all move to China, write Sherlock Holmes books, produce Sherlock Holmes movies, and post all our work on the Internet under assumed names!

You can do whatever the heck you want with it, as long as you live outside the USA. This whole mess is a US-only thing.

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Makes me wish we could all move to China, write Sherlock Holmes books, produce Sherlock Holmes movies, and post all our work on the Internet under assumed names!

Heck, even when all the stories were under copyright, oodles (that's a technical term) of people were able to get permission to write Sherlock Holmes pastiches. From what I have read, they would actually contact Doyle's widow directly. ETA: And later, they contacted his, uhm, daughter, I think. (Both were named Jean, to confuse the issue. Which is why I got confused.) I'm not sure if they had to pay anything, and many of the stories were controversial to say the least. (For example, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Didbin -- some fans wondered why the family gave permission for that book to be written. .) I wonder how that works today? Doyle's widow died, and the estate probably has different ideas about pastiches. Yet there is no shortage of new Sherlock Holmes stories.

Then there was the unapproved stuff. I read an article somewhere that discussed how Sherlock Holmes fans wrote some of the earliest fan fiction.