How Long Should a Dead Celebrity Live?

. . . especially if that celebrity, if you believe scoundrels not fit to join the Baker Street Irregulars, was not alive to begin with?

Although Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories have passed into the public domain in the U.K, copyright protection lives on in the U.S. Could it be that this country has gone too far?

Heirs and estate administrators certainly don't mind the long stream of revenue Holmes has generated. And lawyers must be grateful for the work Holmes has posthumously sent their way. As the Times reports, For the Heirs to Holmes, a Tangled Web.

"Watson, we may need a lawyer."

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons