Michael Hiltzik: These historic works are coming free from copyright. Why did it take so long?
It's well understood that Sherlock Holmes dispatched his great nemesis, Professor Moriarty, to his death in the 1893 story "The Final Problem," but not until this New Year's Day does the fictional detective shed the shackles that have bound him to an even longer-lived nemesis: the complexities of copyright law.
On Sunday, the last of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle enters the public domain. The expiration of the copyright on the last stories published by Conan Doyle, in the 1927 volume "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes," writes the final chapter to a long-lasting battle over the publication rights to Holmes and Dr. Watson waged by the Conan Doyle estate.
"They're out of copyright arguments," says Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University. Every year at about this time, Jenkins produces a list of creative works, classic and merely popular, that enter the public domain in the U.S. on New Year's Day.
This year's roster covers works published in 1927 and therefore subject to final copyright expiration as of 2023.
As usual, it's a treasure trove. Among the literaryWilla Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop," William Faulkner's second novel, "Mosquitos" (his first, "Soldier's Pay," entered the public domain in 2022) and "The Tower Treasure," the first Hardy Boys mystery by the pseudonymous Franklin W. Dixon.
