The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Along with Laurie R. King, Klinger edited A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. He was working on a new collection called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes with stories by Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, Lev Grossman and more. He made his case, in the release:

The Conan Doyle Estate contacted our publisher … and implied that if the Estate wasn’t paid a license fee, they’d convince the major distributors not to sell the book. Our publisher was, understandably, concerned, and told us that the book couldn’t come out unless this was resolved … It is true that some of Conan Doyle’s stories about Holmes are still protected by the U.S. copyright laws. However, the vast majority of the stories that Conan Doyle wrote are not. The characters of Holmes, Watson, and others are fully established in those fifty ‘public-domain’ stories. Under U.S. law, this should mean that anyone is free to create new stories about Holmes and Watson.

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What’s your favorite kind of book? We’ve created a giant flowchart to help you browse the top 50 free eBooks at Project Gutenberg.

Click the image above to see a larger version of the book map. Your choices range from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen, from Sherlock Holmes to needlework. Below, we’ve linked to all 50 free eBooks so you can start downloading right now. The books are available in all major eBook formats.

Follow this link to see an online version of the flowchart, complete with links to the the individual books.

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The BBC recently launched an updated version of the Sherlock Holmes stories–Sherlock features a text messaging detective named Holmes and a blogging  doctor named Watson. In the U.S., Sherlock will air on PBS’ Masterpiece for three consecutive Sundays beginning October 24th.  From October 25 until December 7, 2010 you can watch episodes for free at the Masterpiece website–each episode will be available the day after broadcast.

The trailer for the updated series is embedded above. What do you think? Actor Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement) plays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s famous detective and Martin Freeman (The Office UK) plays his sidekick, Doctor John Watson.

Here’s more about the show from io9: “The writing is so good and acting so convincing that it immediately makes sense that the war-haunted, gruff-and-ready Watson would write a blog at the advice of his therapist, that the technology-forward, cryptic Holmes would take to texting — he ‘prefers’ it — and run a website.”

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated for clarity.

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