Sherlock Holmes and the Copyright Caper

"The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has put forward an defence ingenious enough for Sherlock Holmes himself in a US copyright case that could redraw the boundaries of copyright law to recognise 'complex literary characters.'" the Guardian reports. The plaintiff is seeking to establish that the characters of Holmes and Watson are already in the public domain, but the estate argues that the characters remain protected until the copyrights for all the works in which they appear expire "because the subtleties and quirks of character that define the super-intelligent detective, his trusty right-hand man, and the duo's relationship, were developed throughout the entire body of works," the Guardian further reports.