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The Adventure Of The Shrinking Public Domain, Elizabeth L. Rosenblatt

University of Colorado Law Review

Several scholars have explored the boundaries of intellectual property protection for literary characters. Using as a case study the history of intellectual property treatment of Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional character Sherlock Holmes, this Article builds on that scholarship, with special attention to characters that appear in multiple works over time, and to the influences of formal and informal law on the entry of literary characters into the public domain. While copyright protects works of authorship only for a limited time, copyright holders have sought to slow the entry of characters into the public domain, relying on trademark law, risk aversion, …