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posted by martyb on Saturday July 19 2014, @12:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-was-not-a-Jeopardy-contestant dept.

SCOTUSblog tells us:

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan refused on Thursday afternoon to block a federal appeals court ruling against continued copyright protection for fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, for any stories about him that have entered the public domain. Kagan acted without even asking for a response from an author who is preparing a new Holmes anthology, and she gave no explanation for her denial of a stay.

More background on the case and details about the filing in this detailed earlier SCOTUSblog post which notes:

[Sir Arthur Conan] Doyle has been dead for eighty-four years, but because of extensions of copyright terms, ten of his fifty-six short stories continue to be protected from copying. All of the short stories and four novels were published between 1887 and 1927, but all of the collection except ten short stories have entered into the public domain as copyrights expired.

The Doyle estate, though, is pressing a quite unusual copyright theory. It contends that, since Doyle continued to develop the characters of Holmes and Watson throughout all of the stories, the characters themselves cannot be copied even for what Doyle wrote about them in the works that are now part of the public domain and thus ordinarily would be fair game for use by others.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by cafebabe on Saturday July 19 2014, @01:51PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Saturday July 19 2014, @01:51PM (#71216) Journal

    This is an awkward issue. I was under the impression that copyrighted characters remained in copyright if they were still under development. I was definitely under the impression it worked that way for comic book characters. For example, public domain superheros [wikia.com] which fell out of copyright due to lack of copyright notice or lack of development. And characters such as Sabrina Skunk [sabrina-online.com] which are licensed with conditions by their creators [sabrina-online.com].

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  • (Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Saturday July 19 2014, @03:45PM

    by Buck Feta (958) on Saturday July 19 2014, @03:45PM (#71244) Journal

    Very interesting. So what's the import for fan fiction? It's ok to create, just not for commercial purposes?

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    - fractious political commentary goes here -
    • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday July 19 2014, @03:53PM

      by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Saturday July 19 2014, @03:53PM (#71248)

      Fan fiction violates trademark laws, but most trademark owners don't do anything about it because they'd be pissing off their own fans and generating ill will. They tolerate fan fiction as long as it's mostly on the down low.

      Now if you sold your own stories under their trademark, they'd lawyer up and you'd play Alderaan to their Death Star. So if I wrote and published a Star Wars novel for sale, George Lucas--wait, Disney--would come after me.

      As an intellectual property owner, you have to defend your trademark or it isn't taken seriously.

      If you reproduced someone's work, you'd be violating copyright law. You'd be disseminating their copyrighted works.

      As always, don't take my comments as legal or medical advice. If you want flower arranging advice, consult a Zen monk.

      --
      (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
      • (Score: 1) by jbWolf on Sunday July 20 2014, @05:58AM

        by jbWolf (2774) <jbNO@SPAMjb-wolf.com> on Sunday July 20 2014, @05:58AM (#71431) Homepage

        It isn't just fan fiction writers that have to worry. I wrote a long Star Wars parody, published it on the Internet, and I constantly worry about what "The Mouse" will think. Here's an interesting tidbit from an article [creators.com] I ran across:

        • Parody is a form of protected expression under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which, among other things, guarantees "freedom of speech").
        • If the person or company you're making fun of doesn't like your parody, they will sue your pants off anyway, forcing you to spend tons of money in legal fees so you can assert and defend your First Amendment rights.

        Wanting to publish my parody, I finally decided to address this issue directly and wrote a letter to Disney in my website [jb-wolf.com] on the same page that I offer my story. (Scroll down to the very bottom on that link.)

        All the craziness with trademarked names and perpetual copyrights has led to me to wonder what would be optimal. What should we be targeting as an optimal set of laws concerning copyrights, patents, and trademarks? That's not something I see too often so I also decided to address that in my website as well. I've presented some ideas that I think would be interesting to talk about with others and (once ideas are more flushed out), ultimately present to Congress as a larger group.

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        www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday July 19 2014, @03:49PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Saturday July 19 2014, @03:49PM (#71245)

    As far as I know, there is no copyright on characters or fictional situations, only on published works. You're probably thinking of the trademark issue, where if a property is not used in so many years, the owner loses the right to keep the trademark active. That's why Marvel and DC will bring back some property from the past for a mini-series that doesn't sell much, just to use the trademark. A good example of this was the New Mutants from 2009-12, where Marvel launched a series because this property had not been used in a long time and had to have its trademark renewed. Interest was minimal (the sales numbers show a spike from crossovers and a deep, terminal decline otherwise), but the property was trademarked. At the time, rumors of a movie under development were circulating, but they came to nothing and by the time this trademark is up for renewal again, the property will be worthless.

    I'm no more a lawyer than a doctor, so don't take my comment as the final word. You should consult an intellectual property attorney. And a real doctor, for that matter. Getting legal or health advice from comments on news stories isn't healthy.

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 20 2014, @03:56PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday July 20 2014, @03:56PM (#71527) Journal

      Getting legal or health advice from comments on news stories isn't healthy.

      Hmmm ... I've read that in a comment on a news story ... so I basically should ignore this advice? But then, ignoring it would imply not ignoring it ...

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday July 20 2014, @04:32PM

        by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Sunday July 20 2014, @04:32PM (#71543)

        You cracked the code! The subtle interpretation is to both take and ignore the advice at the same time. If it works, credit your own cleverness; if it does not work, you have someone to blame. In other words, use quantum mechanics to defer whether you take or ignore the advice until you measure the outcome, then make a final commitment. Maybe this is getting too "meta" for a story about fan fiction.

        Hey, I always wanted to write some Star Wars fan fiction. I had several novels outlined. Then Disney bought them. So I thought - why would I write anything for a Disney property? Very discouraging. For me - whether it is for anyone else depends on your opinion of fan fiction - but I think I could do better than Kevin J. Anderson. Actually, the monkeys with typewriters...

        --
        (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)