[HN Gopher] Sherlock Holmes will finally escape copyright this w...
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Sherlock Holmes will finally escape copyright this weekend
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 209 points
Date : 2022-12-28 19:07 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I can finally retire the "Sherlock Holmes' emotions are still
| copyrighted" legal argument that I used to use for explaining the
| penumbra of the public domain.
| EGreg wrote:
| Tell us !!
| bena wrote:
| Eh. The Conan Doyle estate argues that the characterization
| of Holmes was materially different in some of the final
| stories. So any story that materially changes Holmes to be
| less of an ass was using _that_ characterization.
|
| Netflix was about to take them to court over Enola Holmes,
| but all parties eventually settled and the suit was dropped.
|
| Likely the Conan Doyle estate realized their final copyrights
| were about to be up and it wasn't worth the legal battle they
| would likely lose because "having emotions" is incredibly
| vague.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| When does the estate become less of an ass?
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| It already did. Unfortunately, it being less of an ass is
| still under copyright.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Assness of an estate, as most human organizations,
| directly correlates to potential power.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Emotions about the character of persons, that are deducted
| by the length of the nose and the span of the eyebrows?
| Seriously, reading the books with a detectives eyes, one
| can see all the nonsense they believed aeons ago..
| bena wrote:
| I mean, Holmes can only really be as smart and capable as
| Arthur Conan Doyle was. Any blind-spots or nonsense
| Holmes engaged in was because Conan Doyle believed it.
|
| Which means Holmes believed in some really batshit ideas.
| But since the world of Holmes is defined by Conan Doyle,
| shit like phrenology was real in that world.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Which is bad news for that Sherlock show.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Or that ridiculous quak-science with the monkey stem
| cells transfusion. The deduction stories were excellent,
| but some of the outlier-stories or the "nationalism" race
| characteristics are the insanity that gave us WW1 and
| WW2.
| bena wrote:
| Even the deduction stuff is only because Conan Doyle says
| so.
|
| Like he could determine cultivars of tobacco from looking
| at and feeling the ash. And other people never pick up on
| things that even the reader could. But Holmes does. And
| then you feel smart, because you even beat Holmes to the
| punch.
|
| My wife has been watching Bones (again) and I've noticed
| this a lot there too. It was an episode where the victim
| was a nine-year-old child. They "digitally reconstructed"
| the child's appearance and couldn't find a match, but
| then noticed the hair was dyed, the teeth were veneered,
| etc. And it's obvious, the child was on the pageant
| circuit. But they didn't put it together until the answer
| was given to them. Later on, same thing with a murder
| weapon. They assumed it was a steel-toe boot, but it's
| pageant contestants, tap shoes are also available. Etc.
| etc. And yes, tap shoes were used in the murder.
|
| And there's two reasons for this. This is how smart the
| writers _are_. They honestly think this takes significant
| deductive ability. And making the characters figure it
| out faster would be implausible. Or. They want the
| viewers /readers to feel smart. And one way to do that is
| to make them able to figure out the pieces _before_ the
| characters. Characters who are the smartest because we
| 're told they're the smartest.
| akuchling wrote:
| Editor, Sherlockian scholar, and lawyer Leslie Klinger took
| the Doyle estate to court about this idea, and got a
| judgement that it didn't hold. His blog about the case is
| at https://free-sherlock.com/ .
| irrational wrote:
| When Peter Pan escaped copyright, there was a flood of new Peter
| Pan books. I wonder if we will see the same thing with Sherlock
| Holmes.
| samwillis wrote:
| The copyright around Peter Pan is super interesting with an
| amendment in UK law to extend it to provide income to the very
| good cause of Great Ormond Street Hospital:
| https://www.gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/copyright/
|
| > J M Barrie's gift of the rights to Peter Pan has provided a
| significant source of income to Great Ormond Street Hospital
|
| > The copyright first expired in the UK (and the rest of
| Europe) in 1987, 50 years after Barrie's death.
|
| > However, former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan successfully
| proposed an amendment to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act
| (CDPA) of 1988, giving Great Ormond Street Hospital the unique
| right to royalties from stage performances of Peter Pan (and
| any adaptation of the play) as well as from publications, audio
| books, ebooks,radio broadcasts and films of the story of Peter
| Pan, in perpetuity.
|
| I think this means that the adaptions you are referring to
| haven't been published in the UK.
|
| For those outside the UK and unaware GOSH if the most famous
| and most highly regarded children hospital in the UK. The NHS
| here get much criticism at times but the prevision for children
| is world class with a network of incredible children's
| hospitals. Having been in the situation where my child has been
| under the care of one of the children's hospitals, they are
| incredible.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Anyone wonder why Mickey Mouse is no longer the signature Disney
| character any more? I think we know why now. No more control over
| the character.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Mickey Mouse is still the signature mascot of Disney. There's a
| massive difference between copyright and trademark.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Legally, yes, but even there the PR flacks confuse the issue
| by lumping trademark, copyright, patent and sometimes even
| trade secrets under "intellectual property".
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| I believe he is still trademarked though, isn't he?
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| who is the central mascot then
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| spiderman
| d-us-vb wrote:
| I hope you're joking. Spider-man is owned entirely by Sony.
| It is only by a tenuous contract that Disney was able to
| get Spider-Man into the MCU.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Sony has film rights only, for as long as they produce a
| new Spider-Man movie every five years.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Wow. No.
|
| Spider-Man is owned by Marvel, which is owned by Disney.
|
| Sony has an exclusive license to the film rights which
| they will eventually lose and cede back to Disney.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Spider-Man is almost entirely owned by Marvel. Spider-
| Man's live action movie rights are owned by Sony as long
| as they produce at least one film with the character
| every 5 years and 9 months. This includes co-producing
| them with Marvel. Universal owns the film rights to both
| solo Hulk and Namor films. Finally, Fox owned the right
| to make 13 X-Men films, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool
| films over 20 years, but Disney bought those rights back.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| The _film_ rights are owned by Sony. As part of the deal
| in relinquishing some creative control to Disney for the
| MCU, Sony also has exclusivity to Spider-Man centric
| video games (e.g., other games, like Midnight Suns, can
| use Spider-Man as a supporting character, but not the
| primary character).
| manojlds wrote:
| Funnily, Nintendo got Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 which
| had Spiderman.
| TillE wrote:
| Mickey Mouse is a terrible, boring character that nobody cares
| about.
|
| Disney can keep using him as a trademarked corporate logo,
| that's all they really need.
| omnibrain wrote:
| > Mickey Mouse is a terrible, boring character that nobody
| cares about.
|
| That is funny, because I think most Germans born in the 80ies
| to mid 90ies would disagree. We got a daring adventurer and a
| hard-boiled detective. I don't think it was content
| specifically produced by the German publisher for the German
| market, but it is possible, that there was more focus on that
| content opposed to "classic mickey".
|
| Edit: I looked it up: It looks like the detective stories
| were English, but first compiled for Denmark, whereas the
| adventurer stories were from the Italian publication
| "Topolino".
| [deleted]
| bombolo wrote:
| In Sweden most of the donald duck/mikey mouse comics are
| translated from Italy, occasionally from Brazil.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Disney+ uses a little clip of "Steamboat Willie" in the leaders
| to streamed Disney movies. Making out-of-copyright Steamboat
| Willie into a trademark thing muddies the waters at least a
| little, and I'd guess that's why Disney+ uses it.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They've been using rubber hose Mickey for marketing a lot
| more in the last 10 years for this reason.
| manojlds wrote:
| How does this work? It feels silly that someone can use Mickey
| Mouse and create cartoons and stories?
|
| What about something like Mario? Will it eventually go in
| public domain as well?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| How is it sillier that any someone can use Mickey Mouse for
| whatever than that someone can use Mickey Mouse to create
| cartoons, but only some random people who happen to be hired
| by a specific giant corporation?
| thelopa wrote:
| Yes. That's how the public domain works.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| In the US. it's in public domain in Europe for the last 20 years.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Uh... doesn't the EU have the same life+70 terms the US has? In
| fact, weren't they _the_ reason that Disney was able to get
| their term extension in the US?
| Vespasian wrote:
| Now they do, but at the time of publishing they had different
| rules so those apply.
| input_sh wrote:
| Arthur Connan Doyle died in 1930, therefore life+70 is 2000.
|
| In general, yes, both use life+70, but different rules apply
| to works before that was settled.
| mlboss wrote:
| Time to create some new adventures using chatgpt
| [deleted]
| kristopolous wrote:
| Thank goodness Honky Tonk Train Blues by Meade Lux Lewis will
| finally be public domain.
|
| But you'll have to wait another year for Pinetop's Boogie Woogie
| by Clarence Smith (who died before the 1929 stock market crash).
|
| In all seriousness, the first one is considered the first Rock n
| Roll song by some scholars. (you'll have to go archive.org to get
| the 1927 recording - youtube only has later ones -
| https://archive.org/details/78_honky-tonk-train-blues_meade-... )
| bilsbie wrote:
| How come the owners don't just trademark these characters to get
| around the expired copyright?
|
| Wouldn't that let them block all new material made with those
| characters?
|
| (Asking for a friend)
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| My guess is that there is a window of time from creation of a
| mark during which it must be registered to be valid.
| alazsengul wrote:
| This is from an article on Mickey Mouse that was linked to in
| the original Sherlock Holmes article:
|
| Here is where it gets tricky: Disney also holds trademarks on
| its characters, including the "Steamboat Willie" version of
| Mickey Mouse, and trademarks never expire as long as companies
| keep submitting the proper paperwork. A copyright covers a
| specific creation (unauthorized copying), but trademarks are
| designed to protect against consumer confusion -- to provide
| consumers assurance about the source and quality of a creation.
|
| Boiled down, any public domain use of the original Mickey
| cannot be perceived as coming from Disney, Ms. Ginsburg
| explained.
|
| Source:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221227170631/https://www.nytim...
| Sunspark wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how clear does it need to be presented to
| the viewer that this is not a Disney production? Does it need
| to be written out at the beginning "The characters depicted
| here are entirely fictional and are not from the Disney
| corporation"? Or can it be at the end credits? Is it
| sufficient to expect that a viewer seeing the Warner Brothers
| animation and music at the beginning would know it's not
| Disney, or does it require more?
| IshKebab wrote:
| As far as I know you can't get out of it by saying "this
| definitely isn't a Disney product", no matter how clearly.
| sithlord wrote:
| They try and defend that thing crazy too, I believe deamau5
| got in quite the legal battle with his mouse helmet.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Trademarks are supposed to designate the source of a product or
| good--not the good itself--and you have to actually use it in
| practice. The estate could have probably created Sherlock brand
| corncob pipes and maintained a trademark. But that wouldn't
| allow them to block someone from making a Sherlock Holmes movie
| or reprinting the books.
|
| It might work for Disney because they have real products and
| can use Mickey to brand them. Even that won't stop someone from
| making Steamboat Willy 2. But it might block someone from
| making MickeyLand Amusement park.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Trademarks don't stop new creative works. They can only stop
| misleading use (like using the name to refer to something
| else).
|
| So if Holmes is trademarked I can't make "Evil Sherlock Holmes
| Supervillian Movie" but I could write a story wherein he is his
| usual self.
| gameshot911 wrote:
| I'm not sure that's correct. I think your 'Evil Sherlock' is
| a perfect example of what is _now allowed_ without copyright
| protections.
|
| I believe a trademark just prevents you from releasing a new
| Sherlock narrative that misleads the public that it's a
| legitimate story from the original collection.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Finally! I can start shopping around my spec script for "Sherlock
| Holmes : The Adventure of the Body in the Honey Jar" Winnie the
| Pooh crossover.
| [deleted]
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