The Artful Jurist

Considering the plethora of commercials hyping it, you’ve probably heard that there’s a new Sherlock Holmes movie (appropriately titled Sherlock Holmes) coming out on Christmas day. Toss this one into the huge collection of film versions of the noted fictional detective. Was there ever a franchise more lucrative than Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic sleuth? Just check out this web site if you’re curious how many different actors have played the role over the years.

But here’s a legal question concerning the famous Mr. Holmes. Was the character of Holmes copyrighted? The stories most definitely were, and my understanding is that, although the copyright has expired on most of Sir Arthur’s works (he died in 1930), at least one of his books is still protected under American copyright law. Still, that doesn’t answer the question of whether his most famous character was copyrighted.

Traditionally, you can’t copyright a character. You can only copyright the specific expression of that character’s participation in a creative work. But the courts have found some occasions where a character, itself, is so unique in appearance and traits as to be copyrightable in and of itself. Most often, those copyrightable characters tend to be cartoons and/or superheroes. Sherlock Holmes had extraordinary abilities, but he wasn’t Superman.

Still, as I perused the web in search of an answer, I found more than a couple of references to the ownership of the copyright to the character of, rather than the stories about, Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know if they’re accurate accounts. But I’d be curious to know if someone’s collecting a royalty check on just the title character in the new movie.

More than 120 years after first making his appearance, the master sleuth of Baker Street still provides a good mystery.