Intellectual Property — copyright

Listen to this article

U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Civil

Intellectual Property — copyright

It does not violate the copyright of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate to create original works featuring the character of Sherlock Holmes.

“With the net effect on creativity of extending the copyright protection of literary characters to the extraordinary lengths urged by the estate so uncertain, and no legal grounds suggested for extending copyright protection be-yond the limits fixed by Congress, the estate’s appeal borders on the quixotic. The spectre of perpetual, or at least nearly perpetual, copyright (perpetual copyright would violate the copyright clause of the Constitution, Art. I, § 8, cl. 8, which authorizes copyright protection only for ‘limited Times’) looms, once one realizes that the Doyle estate is seeking 135 years (1887–2022) of copyright protection for the character of Sherlock Holmes as depicted in the first Sherlock Holmes story.”

Affirmed.

14-1128 Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Castillo, J., Posner, J.