Keyboards ready? Produce...SHERLOCK FIC!

[delphipsmith]

"A judge has ruled that the vast majority of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes stories are now in the public domain in the US, which means (among other things) that you can make money off your Johnlock fic without Conan Doyle’s heirs swooping down on you with blazing swords, ready to exact financial vengeance. It’s go time..."

Read the rest here. So all of you go start selling your Sherlock fic :D

(I don't have any Sherlock icons so you get Giles. Librarian, detective, same thing, right?)

Comments

[delphipsmith]

Yeah, the US is very very protective of copyright, trademarks, etc. because hey, we're dollar-chasing Yanks ;) It's all about the bu$ine$$, right?

That's an interesting point about the BBC. I'm not sure how copyright works with something that moved into the public domain -- is it even possible to, er, "re-copyright" it? Now I'm curious...

[inamac.livejournal.com]

When the UK changed the time for copyright from 50 years after the author's death to 75 years a lot of works that had been out of copyright, including Kipling, went back in again, so yes, it is possible to 're-copyright' (and, of course, the copyright of Peter Pan was regularly 'updated' by separate Acts of Parliament and now belongs to GOSH in perpetuity - at least in the UK).

Gatiss and Moffat have the rights on their scripts for Sherlock, and the BBC has the rights to the actual series, but of course there is not (and never has been) 'copyright on ideas'. I am getting fed up of pointing out that you can only infringe 'copyright' by making an exact (or substantially close) copy of a work - that's what 'copyright' means!