"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Public Domain" Topic

I don't know much about the book publishing industry but hopefully some of you do. Are the books and short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the public domain now? If they are that means that anyone can publish his work, correct? The reason I am asking is that I am thinking of doing a web-comic of the Brigadier Gerard stories, but I wouldn't want to do so if it meant a lawsuit obviously.

Apparently so – at least, a number of them are listed on LibriVox, and they only handle public domain materials: link

The family of Sir ACD may have retained the rights, especially to his image and name, not sure about Holmes. His historical works of fiction may belong to a publisher not him.

About a year ago I picked up a new copy of Moby Dick for $5.00, it's great whent he classics finally make it into the PD.

It's a very good question that you raise.

I think there is already a comic version of the Gerard stories. I may be wrong, but I'm sure I've seen a comic version somewhere on the web quite recently.

I'll have to wrack my brains to remeber where …

AFAIK, in the United States, works published before 1923 are in the public domain. There's a total of 95 years of protection for works published before 1963. After that, it's life plus 70 years.

So check the initial copyright. The last of his books may not yet be in the public domain.

That is, 95 years for works published 1924 to 1963

You're fine, Rob. He's been convenintly dead since 1930, making all his creations public domain material in, well, any country you might think of publishing in.

I just went over this with my publisher's law dept regarding my use of H.G. Wells' characters in my next book, 'The Island of Mad Scientists'. Wells died in 1946, but I'm using characters he created prior to 1923. So I can use Professor Cavor and the Invisible Man quite happily in a book published in N. America.

So anyone can use Holmes at this point? Interesting.

Joey

As I mentioned, Gerard has already been done as a comic strip … see:

link

But that's not to say you couldn't do another version yourself, DW …

Thanks everyone.
Arteis: Darn it! Someone beat me to the punch! Thanks for pointing that out though. I think I will do it anyway, what I have in mind is very different. In the meantime I'm going to read this comic! I like the artist's style.

Holmes is not (and could not be) under copyright. But there may be a valid trademark out there. I know that the modern pastiche writers all seem to do some kind of agreement with the Conan Doyle estate.