HE is the most famous and enduring detective in literary history, created more than 130 years ago by Scots author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Now, all these decades on, a legal case is underway involving the sleuth himself - Sherlock Holmes.

 

What’s it all about then?

The case focuses on Enola Holmes, a mystery movie released in September on Netflix, starring Stranger Things’ actress, Millie Bobby Brown as Enola, the teenage sister of the already-famous Sherlock Holmes, who investigates the disappearance of her mother. The film is based on the first book in a young adult fiction series of the same name by US author, Nancy Springer.

 

Sherlock appears?

Superman actor, Henry Cavill, plays the iconic detective in the film that had been due to screen in cinemas, but switched to streaming due to the pandemic. The cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter and Frances de la Tour.

 

What’s the problem?

Earlier this year, the Conan Doyle Estate sued Netflix, the production firm Legendary Pictures, the book publishers Penguin Random House and others, including Springer, claiming copyright infringement and trademark violations. 

 

So when did the first Sherlock story appear?

Edinburgh-born author and doctor Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson in his 1887 novella, A Study in Scarlet, ultimately writing four novels and 56 short stories.

 

But aren’t they in the public domain now?

The majority of the Sherlock tales penned by Conan Doyle - who died in 1930 - came into the public domain in 2014, but the Conan Doyle Estate still owns the copyright for the final 10 stories, which were penned between 1923 and 1927.

 

What’s the issue?

The legal action alleges that it is in the pages of these final tales - from The Adventure of the Creeping Man in 1923 to The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place in 1927 - that the author, impacted by personal experiences including the loss of his brother and son in the Great War, developed Sherlock into “a character with a heart”. The suit states that 

Holmes became "warmer" and "capable of friendship”. The lawsuit alleges that in both the book series and the Netflix adaptation, Sherlock responds to Enola with "warmth and kindness", therefore, potentially infringing on the estate's copyrighted stories.

 

Netflix has now responded?

Representing the defendants, attorney Nicolas Jampol of Davis Wright Tremaine law firm, writes in the legal motion filed in response to the suit that it is a "fundamental tenet" of copyright law that ideas aren't protectable and the same is true for general feelings, emotions and personality traits.

"In this case, even if the Emotion Trait and Respect Trait were original to copyright protected works, which they are not, they are unprotectable ideas," he says. "Copyright law does not allow the ownership of generic concepts like warmth, kindness, empathy, or respect, even as expressed by a public domain character - which, of course, belongs to the public, not Plaintiff.”

 

What now?

The motion ends with a request for the case to be dismissed, with Jampol saying: "The character Sherlock Holmes, as expressed in more than fifty works across the decades, has fallen into the public domain and now belongs to the public.”