CEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE – CONAN DOYLE REDUX ED.

When  last we checked in on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s posthumous intellectual property enforcement activities (“Conan Doyle Estate  Down for the Count“), his estate’s attempt to enjoin publication of a collection of original Sherlock Holmes stories, A Study in Sherlock, was rejected in an opinion written by Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner. In that case…

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BOOK REPORT: WITHOUT COPYRIGHTS

As readers of this blog and my book, Unfair to Genius, must know, I am fascinated by the ways in which developments in the law sometimes shape and are sometimes shaped by developments in the arts. They will also know that I have a weakness for a good story about the colorful luminaries and rapscallions that populated the arts and the…

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FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING

Some time ago, in our continuing series of “Cease and Desist Letters from Beyond the Grave,” we reported on a complaint for copyright infringement filed by William Faulkner’s literary estate against Sony Pictures, arising out of a single line spoken by Owen Wilson in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris: “The past is not dead. Actually, it’s not…

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CEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE–CONAN DOYLE EDITION

Leslie Klinger is the author or editor of two dozen books and numerous articles on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.  Recently he edited a collection, called A Study in Sherlock, containing original stories based on the Holmes’ character and other elements of Conan Doyle’s originals.  Although the entire Sherlock Holmes canon is in the public…

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CEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE–FAULKNER ED.

The literary estate of William Faulkner has been on quite a tear this past week.  On October 25th it filed a copyright infringement suit against Sony Pictures Classics, and on October 26th another against Northrop Grumman Corporation and The Washington Post.  Both suits center around the attibuted use of a famous Faulkner aphorism.  In the Sony…

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