Supreme Court rejects 'elementary' case

The game is afoot: Sherlock Holmes, writer Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, is now in the public domain.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case presented by Doyle’s estate, which argued that authors wanting to publish stories about Holmes be required to pay a licensing fee. Judge Richard Posner, of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, maintained in June that copyright protection no longer applied to the majority of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and the court’s Monday refusal leaves that decision intact. The copyright protections for 50 Holmes works published before 1923 have expired, making the stories part of the public domain.

Doyle died in 1930, leaving behind a legacy of widely celebrated fiction about the brilliantly eccentric Victorian-era Holmes, resident of 221B Baker Street, along with his faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson, and nemesis Professor Moriarty. According to the appeals court, only the last 10 Holmes works penned by Doyle—published between 1923 and 1927, with copyrights expiring past 95 years—still merit protection.

The case unfolded last year following the Doyle estate’s demand that a licensing fee be paid by the publisher Pegasus, which had plans to release In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, an anthology of Holmes-inspired stories by contemporary writers, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger. Rather than pay the $5,000 fee, Klinger—who had already paid the estate a fee for previous work—sued the estate and won.

The anthology’s publisher postponed the work’s publication when the Doyle estate threatened to shut down Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com book sales until it received a licensing fee. But Monday’s court decision means the estate is finally out of options, and the anthology likely will appear soon in virtual and brick-and-mortar bookstores.