CW: Attempted Homicide, Nazis (very briefly), Homophobia
Or at least according to Andrea Plunket and the Conan Doyle Estate. This episode, we discuss the finer points of Sherlock’s copyright— since only parts of the story are public domain in the U.S., only parts of the character are, too! So what can you do? Can he make a sandwich? Pet a dog? Smile? Respect women? Somehow all of this involves a real-life attempted murder, a huge number of court cases, and how copyright law is a convoluted mass of bull up to interpretation!
This is a link to the case where it was argued that Sherlock having emotions and liking dogs should be a protected character trait and should not be allowed in current remakes.
This is a link to another case where Andrea Plunket filed against USA Cable saying she had to be paid before they were allowed to air their young Sherlock movie.
This is Part 1 of the Sheldon Reynolds Sherlock Holmes that led to Andrea Plunket thinking she had the right to the copyright after Reynold’s death.
This is just a biography of Claus, Andrea Plunket’s ex who was accused of murdering his ex-wife.
This case is Plunket v. Estate of Dame Jean Conan Doyle.
Just a link where you can read up on the version where Sherlock was analyzed by Freud.
This links to a scene from the 1987 TV movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes where he was cryogenically frozen.
Here’s that time Batman met up with Sherlock with a bunch of links to other times Sherlock has popped in and out of the DC universe.
Just a fun quote here from this link to an article about the Enola Holmes case where you can read more about that with links leading to more info: “‘Even if the Emotion Trait and Respect Trait were original to copyright protected works, which they are not, they are unprotectable ideas,’ they said. ‘Copyright law does not allow the ownership of generic concepts like warmth, kindness, empathy, or respect, even as expressed by a public domain character – which, of course, belongs to the public, not plaintiff.’”
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