A good friend of the Sherlockianly heathen variety sent me a link today that he'd seen put out by Neil Gaiman to the complete appellate ruling on the "Free Sherlock" case. As legal writings go, it's actually quite readable and a bit fun in spots.
The Doyle Estate actually tries to argue that creativity will be inhibited by not letting them continue to collect license fees on the character of Sherlock Holmes, which is one of those weird, backwards sort of arguments we seem to hear a lot of these days, especially in politics. Chief Judge Ruben Castillo, however, was wise enough to see through such silliness and concluded that the Estate was actually trying to functionally extend copyrights beyond the limits set by U.S. law.
I quickly followed up by checking Twitter and found Les Klinger's blog on the matter, condensing the whole thing. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing, and even though we can't all line up to give Les a well-deserved pat on the back, there is one thing I definitely had to do in celebration: check Amazon for the availability of pre-orders on the book at the core of the whole case.
And guess what? The Amazon pre-order page is there.
So I immediately pre-ordered the book for its November 19th publication. A little bit of a celebration now, a longer bit of celebration in November.
The book's title is In The Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, and it's edited by Les Klinger and Laurie King. The fact that the first thing Sherlock Holmes is going to do now that he's free is let us be in his company is a grand little twist, and I'd encourage anyone with even the slightest notion that they'll one day want this book to pre-order now, as a tip of the hat to Les and a celebration of a very special moment in the history of Sherlock Holmes.
The ongoing investigation of Sherlock Holmes, reported from the Peoria, Illinois outpost of Baker Street's dirtiest half a dozen.
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