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Case file s144 · Literature and art · 1930
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1930
Arthur Conan Doyle: Arthur Conan Doyle by Walter Benington, 1914
Arthur Conan Doyle. Walter Benington. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
7 July 1930
Place
Crowborough, England
Field
novelist · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
US copyright law, Seventh Circuit · Common law
Historical event
21st-century Sherlock Holmes revival in film and television
Religion
Arthur Conan Doyle: Atheist and agnostic, Catholic, Other (recorded as lapsed Catholic, spiritism on Wikidata; 19th-century Roman Catholics, Converts to spiritualism from atheism or agnosticism, Scottish former atheists and agnostics on Wikipedia)
Member of
Liberal Unionist Party (Wikidata)
Literature and artWorld warsEuropeUnited Kingdom

Arthur Conan Doyle's heirs charged licence fees for Sherlock Holmes until a court ruled the character was free to use

Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. is a company owned by some collateral descendants of Conan Doyle and others. It claims rights in his works and grants licences. Random House took a licence for the anthology A Study in Sherlock. When Leslie Klinger planned a second anthology, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, the estate warned the publisher, Pegasus Books, that unlicensed books would not be sold by major retailers and that it would work to remove them. Klinger sued for a declaration. On 16 June 2014 the Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Richard Posner, held that Holmes and Watson as they appear in works published before 1923 are in the public domain; the last ten stories protect only their new details. Posner wrote that the declaration let Klinger publish without yielding to what he considered extortion. Justice Elena Kagan denied the estate's emergency stay, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The estate later sued Netflix over Enola Holmes in 2020; that case was dismissed after a settlement†.

What the law took from it

Licence fees on a partly expired copyright last only until someone refuses to pay and sues.

Sources
  1. law.justia.comCourt record
  2. free-sherlock.comPress
  3. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Arthur Conan Doyle's heirs charged licence fees for Sherlock Holmes until a court ruled the character was free to use,” story s144, https://www.celebrity.estate/arthur-conan-doyle-1930, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artWorld warsEuropeCommon lawUnited Kingdom