Zitat
...How the fuck had I always forgotten that this was a factor?
For those not wanting to read the full article, while Sherlock Holmes is entirely in the public domain in the UK, Canada, and much of the world, he's not entirely there in the US - only for stories made prior to 1923. Now from a legal perspective that includes the general archetype of the character, but the Conan Doyle estate believes that having some copyright over the character gives them total copyright for the character, in so much that if you wanna make a story featuring Sherlock Holmes, cough up the cash.
Now a lot of productions decide they'd rather just not bother with the headache of a drawn out legal battle that could mess up their scheduling, so they pay the estate to get them out of the way. The production behind Mr Holmes hadn't done this initially and the estate tried to sue them. A settlement was reached but it was never quite clarified how - the estate originally wanted a portion of the film's profits, so they may have gotten that, or they may have just gotten a straight up fee.
Its not hard to see how Capcom may not have wanted to bother with this.
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