 Phoenix Wright fans rejoice. In an unexpected turnabout, the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles are finally being localized for a worldwide release outside of Japan. Finally, the franchise's trials and tribulations are at an end, and there can be justice for all. Except Ace Attorney investigates two, which is still Japan only. Sorry, Edgeworth fans. So why did it take so long for the Great Ace Attorney games to be released globally? In true Phoenix Wright fashion, this is a tale with an unsolved mystery at its core and plenty of courtroom drama. Plus, just for fun, a bit of Persona 5 Phantom Thievery. So then, it's time to gather some evidence. In 2016, several of the creative leads for the Ace Attorney series were asked whether the Great Ace Attorney would ever be localized. Series producer Motohide Ishiro provided the following testimony. Unfortunately, there's a number of circumstances. We absolutely do want to bring it to the West, but unfortunately, due to these circumstances right now, I'm really really sorry. Nowadays on the internet, lots of fans are directly asking us, where's Great Ace Attorney? On live streams, even the Japanese ones, people from the West will write in and ask where it is. Every time we say, we're sorry, certain circumstances are kind of getting in the way. Hold it! What circumstances are Ishihiro referring to? While nobody at Capcom has been willing to elaborate, the prevailing theory is that this has to do with a prominent character that appears in the Japanese version of the Great Ace Attorney games, Sherlock Holmes. Now, we get to the legal side of the case. Sherlock Holmes first debuted in 1887, meaning that Seraph the Conan Doyle's character is no longer in copyright anywhere in the world. The character is in the public domain, which means that anyone can write a new Sherlock Holmes story. However, there is one group of people who always shout, Objection! United States copyright law lasts slightly longer than copyright law in most other places in the world. You have the Walt Disney Company in part to thank for that, who lobbied for an extension to copyright law to keep Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain. The Conan Doyle estate has been using this longer copyright law to convince the creators of all Sherlock Holmes adaptations to pay license fees for any story published in the US. In 2014 Sherlock Holmes expert Leslie Klinger got sick of this and sued the Conan Doyle estate. The US courts found in Klinger's favour. Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. Except Objection! The Conan Doyle estate wasn't going to give up that easily. In 2014, 10 Sherlock Holmes stories were still under copyright in the United States, and the estate claims these stories have kept part of Sherlock Holmes' personality under copyright. According to the estate, after the stories that are now in the public domain, and before the copyrighted stories, the Great War happened. In World War I Conan Doyle lost his eldest son, Arthur Alene Kingsley. Four months later, he lost his brother, Brigadier General Innis Doyle. When Conan Doyle came back to Holmes in the copyrighted stories between 1923 and 1927, it was no longer enough that the Holmes character needed the most brilliant rational and analytical mind. Holmes needed to be human. The character needed to develop human connection and empathy. Conan Doyle made the surprising artistic decision to have his most famous character, known around the world as a brain without a heart, develop into a character with a heart. Holmes became warmer. He became capable of friendship. He could express emotion. He began to respect women. His relationship to Watson changed from that of a master and assistant to one of a genuine friendship. Watson became more than just a tool for Holmes to use. He became a partner. The friendship of Holmes and Watson became one of the most important and well-known in modern literature. It is the copyrighted stories that create the most important parts of this friendship. In 2015, the estate sued Miramax over Mr. Holmes, a film in which Sir Ian McKellen portrays an aging Sherlock Holmes who is, in the estate's opinion, too friendly. Similarly, in 2020, they sued Netflix over Inola Holmes, a film about Sherlock's non-canon younger sister. Even as the final stories pass out of copyright, the Conan Doyle estate still holds some intellectual property rights. They have trademarked the name Sherlock Holmes, as well as the iconic image of him wearing a deer stalker and smoking a pipe. Even if this isn't the sole reason why Great Ace Attorney hasn't already been released in the West, it's absolutely a factor that Capcom needed to consider. That said, it seems that the company has finally found a workaround. They're simply using a different Victorian-era British super-sleuth instead. None other than Sherlock Holmes. He is where Persona 5 comes into the mix, by the way. Sherlock Holmes' copyright battles are older than you'd think. In 1908, French writer Maurice LeBlanc published a story starring his gentlemen thief character, Arsène Lupin. In the story, entitled Arsène Lupin vs Sherlock Holmes, Lupin engages in a battle of wits against Holmes, wins, and even steals his watch as part of the adventure. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not impressed. Sherlock Holmes' stories were still being published at this time, and the character was firmly under copyright. Lupin had stolen Sherlock's watch, but Maurice LeBlanc had stolen Sherlock. LeBlanc found a way to outsmart Conan Doyle. He changed the name of the character in subsequent editions of his novel to Sherlock Holmes. What? Sherlock Holmes? No. This is a completely new character. Sherlock Holmes is so different. Arsène Lupin has actually been at the heart of a few copyright cases as well. The Japanese manga and anime series, Lupin the Third, has sometimes been localised as Rupin or Wolf to avoid litigation. In the early 2010s, Lupin finally fell into the public domain everywhere around the world. The creators of Persona 5 immediately jumped on that opportunity, which is why Joker's persona is named Arsène, and why Joker lives at a cafe called LeBlanc. Because Lupin is out of copyright, so too is Sherlock Holmes. And that means that Capcom can switch out Sherlock Holmes for this obviously different character in The Great Ace Attorney Games. Case closed. The moral of the story, it doesn't take a genius lawyer to recognise that copyright law makes no sense.