In the past few years, Conan Doyle's Heritage Foundation has been spared no effort to protect the copyright of Sherlock Holmes, and has charged a large amount of copyright usage fees from Britain, the United States and other countries.

In the past, the Conan Doyle Heritage Foundation claimed that they managed all copyrights about Sherlock Holmes and that no one had any right to be involved except for their certification.

Even the Hollywood producer of "Detective Sherlock Holmes", which was released, had to pay a lot of money.

Conan Doyle has three children, one of whom Adrian sold a lot of his father's tall and thinness to others. It was not until 1981 that Conan Doyle's daughter reclaimed these copyrights.

These copyrights were subsequently inherited by the Conan Doyle Heritage Foundation. Because Holmes' image is too valuable, many people are still paying for money every year.

Every year, many writers want to write about Sherlock Holmes's works, but under the obstruction of the Heritage Foundation, few of them can actually publish and publish. They publicly declare that the character of Sherlock Holmes has not entered the public sphere of the United States, and even does not recognize the rest of the countries.

Most of the works created by Mr. Conan Doyle were published before 1923, and the last four works in the series were published after 1923. The wealthy foundations have always been in a strong position to suppress others and are always keen on mailing lawyer letters and suing.

Paying the foundation to use Holmes-related elements seems to be a rule, but compared to wealthy film and television drama companies and large publishing companies, researchers, amateurs and small publishing companies can only use, interpret, and adapt these elements.

Although Qin Mu didn't know whether the foundation would be interested in the distant China, it was worth a try.

Over the years, Qin Mu's English proficiency has been returned to the teacher. He used translation software to write intermittently and then copied it into a document.

Then he came to the long-lost Internet cafe, re-registered an email account, and searched the official email address of the Conan Doyle Heritage Foundation through Google and sent out the information he reported!

...

Charles Doyle is the grandson of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's younger brother Innis. He is now in his forties. He is now one of the administrators of the Conan Doyle Foundation.

Over the years, with the image of Sherlock Holmes, Charles has successfully entered the ranks of millionaires. Now he is sitting on an office chair with a cigar in his mouth and sucking in a mist.

The recently released "Detective Sherlock Holmes" performed very well in the box office. Although its reputation plummeted like the Lushan Waterfall, it earned $46 million in North America in the first weekend, and performed very well worldwide.

This is likely to set the highest box office record for Sherlock Holmes movies. Commercial success is the key, and what does word of mouth count?

"It seems that we have to promote the filmmaking of Sherlock Holmes more and seize the time to make money." Charles said to himself, "The licensing fee for that comic is too small. Now that Holmes is so popular, it should be worth the price."

The foundation actually has very little work, and Charles is a little bored. He has already decided to take the beautiful secretary he had only recruited to go to the golf course to have fun.

Just as he was thinking, the secretary wearing a black suit and dress walked in his high heels, "Mr. Doyle, we received an email from China today, and I think you might want to know."

"Show me, there is a big market in China." Charles Doyle took the email printed by his secretary and glanced casually.

The grammar of this email looks extremely stiff and has some errors, but the meaning of it is roughly clear.

"Warner Bros.'s Holmes essay contest gave us copyright fees, which should be fine. But he used it for publishing, and this should be a separate fee. Linda, you go to this publishing company and give them an email to inform them that they must pay before publishing, otherwise it would be a provocation to our Heritage Foundation."

Linda briefly reminded: "Mr. Doyle, according to Chinese copyright law, works published by Sir Conan Doyle between 1923 and 1927 only have a copyright protection period of 50 years, which has been used by the public for a long time."

"no, no, no! As long as any part of Sherlock Holmes is protected under copyright, all parts of Sherlock Holmes should be protected. Even if literary works enter the public domain, all characters including Sherlock Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty must be paid royalties. The laws of their country can only target their own writers and cannot restrict the rest of the country."

In Charles's opinion, this was just a trivial matter. He spoke again: "Is there an English version of "Sherlock" mentioned in this? If so, find me a copy."

"Sorry, Mr. Doyle, it seems that this only seems to be in Chinese. But I'll contact the publishing company immediately to see if they have an intention to publish in English."

...

Nanhai Publishing Company is located in China's second largest island. It is one of the most complete and powerful publishing houses in China. It can be launched nationwide within one week.

On the 5th floor of Xinghua Building, Zhang Sen, a staff member of the editorial department, was cleaning up the spam information in the contact email, and at the same time forwarded some manuscripts that were sent to the wrong place to the editorial department. At this time, an email in all English attracted his attention.

As a qualified editor, Zhang Sen is proficient in English. After he read it carefully, he immediately called for support.

"Hey, Chen Lei, please help me check if the sender of this email is Conan Doyle's foundation? Why do I think it's like a cheating and asking us for a $5,000 authorization fee? Is this crazy about money?"

Chen Lei, not far away, was quite puzzled. Of course, he knew that his company would publish a fan work related to Sherlock Holmes. He had searched for relevant information at the beginning. Now he can use, interpret and adapt the relevant elements of Sherlock Holmes for free.

"It should be fake, even if it is real, you don't have to pay attention. The complete works of Sherlock Holmes can be published for free. We just publish a fan work. What does it matter?"

Zhang Sen was careful. He found Gu Xinxue's email in the address book and forwarded the email. Five thousand US dollars is not a small number, equivalent to about 30,000 yuan.
Chapter completed!