The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle and Netflix have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the author’s estate, which alleged that the film Enola Holmes infringed copyright by depicting a warmer and more emotional version of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle died in 1930, and while the majority of his writing is in the public domain, 10 of his stories about the famous detective remain under copyright in the US. In the UK, where copyright lasts for 70 years after an author’s death, all Holmes stories are out of copyright. The lawsuit, brought against Netflix, the film’s producers Legendary Pictures, the Enola Holmes author Nancy Springer and others associated with the adaptation, argued that Conan Doyle created “significant new character traits for Holmes and Watson” in the 10 stories still under copyright in the US, which were written between 1923 and 1927. The estate argued that Holmes was previously depicted by Conan Doyle as “aloof and unemotional”. But when the author lost his son during the first world war, and his brother four months later, “it was no longer enough that the Holmes character was the most brilliant rational and analytical mind. Holmes needed to be human. The character needed to develop human connection and empathy … He became capable of friendship. He could express emotion. He began to respect women.” The suit claimed that Springer’s novels, in which she created a younger sister for Holmes, and the film adaptation starring Millie Bobby Brown in the title role, made “extensive use” of the copyrighted stories, which “constitutes wilful, deliberate, and ongoing infringement of the Conan Doyle Estate’s copyrights”. In response, the defendants argued that feelings, personality traits and emotions were not protectable. “Even if the Emotion Trait and Respect Trait were original to copyright protected works, which they are not, they are unprotectable ideas,” they said. “Copyright law does not allow the ownership of generic concepts like warmth, kindness, empathy, or respect, even as expressed by a public domain character – which, of course, belongs to the public, not plaintiff.” Now the lawsuit has been dismissed with prejudice by stipulation of all parties. “That means the case was probably settled, although we don’t know for sure,” wrote Aaron Moss at Copyright Lately. “Sherlock Holmes might be able to figure it out, unless he’s too busy deciding where to go on vacation once the last of his stories enters the public domain [in the US] in two years.” Author James Lovegrove, who has written seven Sherlock Holmes mysteries, most recently Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons, said if there was anything the estate should have objected to in Enola Holmes, it was the depiction of Mycroft, the detective’s elder brother. “If you’re going to sue anyone over anything, you should sue over Mycroft Holmes being shown as a complete prick,” he said. “Holmes has always shown emotions, though not necessarily desirable ones. I think what they were trying to suggest was, because he was sensitive to his sister and had respect for her, even though he normally in the canonical stories doesn’t have a great deal of time for women, they felt that that was something that they could go with. But why? He didn’t have a sister in the canonical stories at all.”