These copyright issues have continued into contemporary times: in the case Klinger v. In and around the 1950s, the character Solar Pons, a pastiche of Holmes, appeared in several books not authorized by the estate of Conan Doyle. The name 'Herlock Sholmes' became one of the more common variations on this, notably in Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes, with the Sholmes character having a personality similar, but not quite exactly like Holmes to further distance potential copyright issues. Subsequently, Doyle and his publishers, and since then Doyle's estate, had aggressive enforced copyright on the Holmes character, often requiring authors that were publishing stories to change any use of Holmes' name to something else. In literature Īrthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, published between 18, drew a large number of pastiches from other authors as early as the 1900s to capture the same mystery and spirit as Doyle's writings. The term is also used more broadly to describe a pastiche work that intentionally evokes similarities to pay homage to other influential works, but is also distinct enough to avoid copyright infringement. Such works may arise when licensing issues prevent a creator from releasing a direct sequel using the same copyrighted characters and names as the original.

In fiction, the term generally refers to a work by a creator that shares similarities to one of their earlier works, but is set in a different continuity, and features distinct characters and settings.

Spiritual successors often have similar themes and styles to their source material, but are generally a distinct intellectual property. Follow up work that does not directly continue the canon of its predecessorĪ spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue the product line or media franchise of its predecessor, and is thus only a successor 'in spirit'.

Bioshock system shock 2 successor