Filed under: Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Rhythm, Business
Yesterday was a busy legal day for the Guitar Hero franchise, what with Harmonix pulling a $14.5 million dollar royalty suit on the same day Activision decided to address a patent claim from its guitar partners at Gibson. Sure, we’re not fancy lawyers with fancy pants, but it strikes us as particularly odd that Gibson managed to work up a deal with Activision - licensing its branding as well as the likenesses of some of its most iconic guitars - well before realizing that, hey! It’s already patented this whole thing and owns the rights to a device whereby a “musician can simulate participation in a concert by playing a musical instrument and wearing a head-mounted 3D display that includes stereo speakers.”
Turns out that while Gibson told its pals at Activision about the patent back in January, the Big A just filed a lawsuit yesterday asking the U.S. District Court for Central California “to declare Gibson’s patent invalid and to bar it from seeking damages.” Considering we’re talking about a billion dollar franchise, we’re sure Gibson’s been seeing dollar signs. Perhaps it’s afraid games like Guitar Hero are siphoning potential guitar sales away from, y’know, actual instruments … or maybe it just figured why the heck not. Unless they make nice nice, we figure there’s a chance we could see Fender-branded guitars in both guitar rhythm series going forward.
[Via Engadget]
Read - Activision’s “Guitar Hero” violates patent: Gibson (Reuters)
Read - United States Patent Number 5,990,405
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