More Copyright Act Bashing

A recent case involving the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle and the Sherlock Holmes character was mercifully rejected by Chicago Federal Judge.  However, the case is further proof that the Copyright Act is misused, abused, and outdated.  In the case, the estate of author Arthur Conan Doyle sought to protect the Sherlock Holmes character from being part of a TV Series "Sherlock."  Now, I know, you are wondering how Sherlock Holmes can still be under the protection of the Copyright laws when he first appeared in works published in 1887 and his creator passed away over 83 years ago.  One would think that Sherlock Holmes was clearly in the public domain by now, right? Well, the Doyle estate disagreed. 

If you read earlier posts  of this blog, you would know that copyright protection generally lasts for the life of the author, plus 70 years.  Let's see, doing the math, 83 years is more than 70 years, and therefore, the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle are in the public domain.  However, the Doyle estate argued that protection remained until the rights expire on the last few stories in which the characters appeared.  According to the Doyle estate, this meant that Sherlock Holmes was copyrighted until sometime in 2022 or 2023.  You have to give it to the Doyle estate, they make a creative argument not based in anything in the Copyright Act.  I digress.

A little history:  the 1909 Copyright Act provided protection for 28 years with a renewal period for another 28 years; the 1976 Copyright Act lengthened the term of protection to life of the author, plus 70 years.  Given that commercial exploitation of copyrighted works is much shorter than 70 years after the author expires.  Indeed, as we move more and more towards consumers with shorter and shorter attention spans (thanks to TiVo, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), it seems as if the commercialization of copyrighted works should also get shorter.  Information travels so fast and becomes old news so fast that it makes sense to have Copyright laws which recognize this change.