New Year's resolutions, part II: copycat, not copyright

 As a fellow writer and I chatted about our work, he said dolefully that he'd love to write stories featuring Sherlock Holmes -- except for the copyright issue. 

And I was like, what? Way more than 100 years since publication of the first Sherlock Holmes story (1887's A Study in Scarlet) and the character was still under copyright? So, why has there been a plethora of Sherlock Holmes movies and TV shows? Not to mention Netflix? Were they all copyright pirates?

Turns out, most of those Holmes vehicles simply bowed to the fiats of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate and paid licensing fees. But the case of the copyrighted Holmes didn't end there, with enough twists to make the master detective proud.

The estate's tenacity matched those of Holmes' greatest villains, claiming that because the final Conan Doyle-penned Holmes stories were published as late as 1927, Sherlock Holmes as a "character" -- apart from the stories themselves -- continued to evolve long after the usual copyright period. Specifically, the estate claimed ownership of any work in which the detective "could express emotion."

Image: Sam Williams at Pixabay

However, court cases and law changes later, Holmes is now "free to smile," in the words of IGN writer Roy Schwartz to whom I'm indebted for a discussion of the new, freer, and possibly sexier Holmes.

And perhaps that writer I chatted with earlier can now flex his Holmes story muscles.

To some degree, I can understand the estate's viewpoint. Aside from the monetary benefits of licensing, Doyle's heirs probably wanted to avoid subjecting Holmes to bizarre parodies of other out-of-copyright works as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or the upcoming slasher version of a childhood favorite, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. (Warning -- it's not the Disney version, which still holds the copyright on Pooh's red shirt.)

But why should we writers limit ourselves to sequels or parodies? A more satisfying option would be using famous characters as supporting actors for completely different protagonists, with new plots and settings.

Think of the lively Enola Holmes take. (Did I mention a sexier Sherlock?) Or Holmesian characters in modern settings, even those out the British Isles, as in TV's Sherlock and Elementary. Or pick up a secondary character, even a villain, as the main character. Ever wonder what Dr Moriarty's been doing lately? 

And for another writer's suggestion of an unlikely villain hidden in The Hound of the Baskervilles, check out my post, "Look to the femme, not the chien."

Even if you'd had enough about Sherlock Holmes, Emily Temple at LitHub suggests other interesting, newly out of copyright works as jumping off points. It's a new year! Get inspired and write!

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Still to come: Is it too early to talk about spring literary events? Not at all!