Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate sues Netflix for giving Sherlock Holmes too many feelings; The Verge, June 25, 2020

Adi Robertson, The Verge; Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate sues Netflix for giving Sherlock Holmes too many feelings

"The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has sued Netflix over its upcoming film Enola Holmes,arguing that the movie’s depiction of public domain character Sherlock Holmes having emotions and respecting women violates Doyle’s copyright.

Enola Holmes is based on a series of novels by Nancy Springer starring a newly created teenage sister of the famous detective. They feature many elements from Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and most of these elements aren’t covered by copyright, thanks to a series of court rulings in the early 2010s. Details from 10 stories, however, are still owned by Doyle’s estate. The estate argues that Springer’s books — and by extension Netflix’s adaptation — draw key elements from those stories. It’s suing not only Netflix, but Springer, her publisher Penguin Random House, and the film’s production company for unspecified financial damages.

The Doyle estate made a similar argument five years ago in a lawsuit against Miramax for its film Mr. Holmes — among other things, it claimed Mr. Holmes included plot details about Holmes’ retirement, which only happens in the final stories. But its new argument is a lot more abstract: basically, if this movie wants Sherlock Holmes to express emotions, its creators need to pay up."

Trump's Space Force Already Lost Its First Battle; The Hollywood Reporter, June 5, 2020

Eriq Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter; Trump's Space Force Already Lost Its First Battle


"Although the United States operates on what's called a "first-to-use" trademark registration system, where priority is based on actual use in commerce rather than who gets to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office first, many other countries operate on a "first-to-file" basis. Records show that Netflix was submitting applications for "Space Force" around the world as early as January 2019. In other words, the Department of Defense was caught sleeping."

Netflix sued for streaming Bicycle Thieves 'without copyright'; Guardian, 10/23/15

Ben Child, Guardian; Netflix sued for streaming Bicycle Thieves 'without copyright' :

"Netflix has been accused of illegally streaming the classic Italian neo-realist drama Bicycle Thieves.

Corinth Films, which claims copyright for Vittorio De Sica’s famous 1948 tale of poverty-stricken postwar Rome, has filed a suit in a New York federal court. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the company accepts that Bicycle Thieves is in the public domain in the US but suggests the subtitled version of the film, which Netflix has previously included on its service, remains under copyright.

“At no time have defendants contacted the plaintiff in order to seek its license for the internet exhibition of the picture, either in whole or in excerpted portions,” the complaint reads. “Despite lacking any rights to exhibit the English subtitled version of the picture, defendants act as though they have exhibition rights.”

Bicycle Thieves, which is also known as The Bicycle Thief in the US, is considered by critics to be one of the greatest films of all time. In a 2008 review for the film’s re-release, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described De Sica’s harrowing drama as a “brilliant, tactlessly real work of art”."

Proposed EU Copyright Rules Could Aid Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, Lovefilm, In Fact Every Streaming Firm; Forbes, 12/10/13

Tim Worstall, Forbes; Proposed EU Copyright Rules Could Aid Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, Lovefilm, In Fact Every Streaming Firm: "The European Union is proposing some changes to how copyright works inside the bloc and one of the things they’re discussing could make it much easier for the streaming companies like Netflix NFLX +2.1%, Spotify, Pandora and all the rest. This is just, in this area at least, something under discussion, open for commentary, but it is one of those things that sounds like a good idea. The problem is that the EU market for copyright is extremely fragmented: to put it in US terms it’s almost as if each State offers copyright on things in that State."

Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either); Harvard Business Review, 7/22/11

James Allworth, Harvard Business Review; Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either) :

"Netflix has become so popular that it recently surpassed the amount of Bittorrent ("pirate") traffic on the web, proving that it's compelling offerings, not lawsuits, that win customer's hearts and minds. But if Hulu and Netflix are so fantastic, what's the concern about Spotify?

Simply put: the way we consume music is fundamentally different to the way we consume movies and TV."