Conan Doyle estate seeks to preserve US copyright of Sherlock Holmes's 'complex personality'; Guardian, 9/19/13

Liz Bury, Guardian; Conan Doyle estate seeks to preserve US copyright of Sherlock Holmes's 'complex personality' : "...whether use of the characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson is covered by copright law until the entire Holmes canon is out of copyright in the United States. At present, 10 stories from the final collection, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, remain in copyright, with the stories due to enter the public domain in different years up to 2022. Sherlockian editor and Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Leslie Klinger filed a suit in February with the aim of establishing that the characters of Holmes and Watson are already in the public domain in the US, after he was asked to pay for a licence to use them in his planned book In The Company of Sherlock Holmes... In its defence, filed this week in Illinois district court, the Doyle estate argues that the characters remain protected until the copyrights in the final stories expire, because the subtleties and quirks of character that define the super-intelligent detective, his trusty right-hand man, and the duo's relationship, were developed throughout the entire body of works."