Sherlock Holmes, footloose and copyright-free

[Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer or an expert on copyright law. If you have legal questions, go talk to a pro.]

Source. (CC-BY-NC 4.0)

You may have heard that the United States copyright on Sherlock Holmes expired with the arrival of the New Year.

You may have also heard something similar ten or so years ago (such as this 2013 news story). Why are we going through this again in 2023?

You may also wonder how a character created in 1887—136 years ago—could have been copyrighted up u...