Now Anybody Can Write a Sherlock Holmes Story

The detective novel was invented in the 1840s, but it was perfected in 1887. That year saw the publication of A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle’s first book to feature his signature character, Sherlock Holmes. Over four decades, Doyle’s stories of the preternaturally talented sleuth cemented Holmes as the world’s most famous detective.

Over more than 250 portrayals on the stage and screen, Holmes is typically portrayed as brilliant yet cold and aloof, aided by his constant companion, John Watson. Now, after more than 130 years and numerous complicated court cases, Holmes has definitively entered the public domain, meaning that anybody can use the character in a published work. And despite the Doyle estate’s protestations, that’s a good thing.

The first U.S. copyright law adopted in 1790 established that a work could be protected for up to 28 years. The current structure, in place since 1998, puts any works published before 1924 in the public domain, while anything published between 1924 and 1978 is copyrighted for 95 years. Most of Doyle’s works were published before 1924, but his final collection of Holmes stories, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1927, making 2022 its final year of copyright protection.

Incidentally, this means that most Holmes stories are already in the public domain and have been for decades. For years, the Doyle estate claimed that as long as any Holmes works were still covered by copyright protection, then that meant the characters were as well.

In 2014, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that while the characters had indeed fallen into the public domain, the specific details of the final 10 Case-book stories remained under copyright. For example,