the biggest difference between howard’s work and the conan doyle case is that in 2013 when the conan doyle case happened, the holmes and watson stories published prior to 1923 were undeniably public domain. the howard stories that are currently public domain are so because the copyright was not renewed, not because the copyright truly expired under copyright law. thus those REH works are de facto public domain, and not undeniable public domain. as oduda pointed out, it won’t become undeniably public domain until 2028. would that make a difference in a court case when arguing from the precedent set in the klinger case? maybe. funcom’s lawyers might make a better argument than what my lawyers would make, and that precedent would be ruled as moot.
the difference between this hypothetical matchup and the case of the miniatures is that the ‘offending party’ didn’t even show up and made no argument. the only argument made in front of the court was the argument in favor of the rights-holders.
in any case, i’m not going to be publishing a conan story and hiring a lawyer to defend my position, so all we can do is argue on this forum. i think we can do that without being snide and dismissive of each other, can’t we?
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