Reviewed 2026-08-10 · United States jurisdiction only · compiled from the sources listed in the margin
Public domain
Confidence · High
Plate
Portrait of Sherlock Holmes — original ink and wash drawing, 6 × 8 in.Sidney Paget (d. 1908)Original drawing, 1904. Paget was the Strand Magazine illustrator whose work fixed the character’s visual identity from 1891 onward.Archive file page →Public domain — Wikimedia Commons, tagged {{PD-old-100-1923}}
First appearance1887 — A Study in Scarlet
Source work56 short stories + 4 novels by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887–1927)
Rights holderArthur Conan Doyle (d. 1930) — no active US rights holder remains
RelatedDr. Watson, Professor Moriarty, Irene Adler
Free to use
The 56 short stories and 4 novels by Arthur Conan Doyle, published 1887–1927, under United States copyright law.
The characters, plots and text as established in those works.
Sidney Paget’s Strand-era illustrations, published in the same window.
Not free to use
Any jurisdiction other than the United States.
Later adaptations — films, series, translations, annotated editions — each of which carries its own separate copyright.
Trademarks and logos used by present-day licensors, which are unaffected by copyright expiry.
About
Sherlock Holmes is the world’s most famous fictional detective, created by Scottish author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle. First appearing in the 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet, Holmes solved cases from his flat at 221B Baker Street alongside his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson, using a method of close observation and deduction that became the template for detective fiction ever after. Doyle wrote 56 short stories and four novels about him over four decades, and few literary characters have been reinterpreted on stage and screen as often.
Version scope
No caveat remains. As of January 1, 2023, the last Doyle stories (from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, 1921–1927) cleared the 95-year US term. Before that date this was genuinely unsettled.
Trademark exposure
None significant. No single rights holder controls “Sherlock Holmes” as a brand.
Key case law
Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd., 755 F.3d 496 (7th Cir. 2014) — rejected the Estate’s theory that traits introduced in still-copyrighted late stories extended protection to the character himself.
Informational, not legal advice
The demo’s “resolved” case — illustrates why version-by-version reasoning mattered for nearly a decade, and what fully cleared looks like once the calendar catches up. This determination is sourced and dated but is not a substitute for legal counsel — verify against primary sources before relying on it commercially.
The complete record: full publication history, the succession of rights holders, the term arithmetic, the expanded legal analysis, and the full source list — already compiled and reviewed, just held back from this page by default.
Each item carries the citation it was compiled from. Nothing is served here whose own rights status has not been checked separately from the character’s.
Item 01 — PlateJPEG · 1280 × 984 px
Portrait of Sherlock Holmes — original ink and wash drawing, 6 × 8 in.
Sidney Paget (d. 1908). Original drawing, 1904. Paget was the Strand Magazine illustrator whose work fixed the character’s visual identity from 1891 onward., 1904. Public domain — Wikimedia Commons, tagged {{PD-old-100-1923}}. Archive file page.
Why this file is free to useCommons carries the file under {{PD-old-100-1923}}: the artist died in 1908, more than 100 years ago, and the drawing dates to 1904 — comfortably before the January 1, 1931 cutoff at which US copyright terms for published works have expired. Chosen because Paget’s Strand-era work is the safest visual ground for this character; nothing tied to the late Case-Book stories that only cleared in 2023 was used.
The complete record: full publication history, the succession of rights holders, the term arithmetic, the expanded legal analysis, and the full source list — already compiled and reviewed, just held back from this page by default. Formatted for printing — use your browser’s Print dialog and choose “Save as PDF”.
Read before relying on itInformational, not legal advice. The dossier states its jurisdiction (United States), its review date, and its confidence value on the first page.
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