Konami Sues Harmonix and MTV, Seeks Cold Hard Cash in Return and Stop the Sales of RockBand
Konami, the publisher of the arcade games DrumMania and Guitar Freaks has filed a law suite against Harmonix and MTV. The Suit claims that Harmonix broke Konami’s US patent for a “musical-rhythm matching game” filed in the United States in 1999. They go on to say that it supersedes Harmonix’s 2007 filing for a “game controller simulating a musical instrument”
Bloomberg, who broke the story, went on to say; Konami who is also releasing Rock Revolution, is seeking cash and an order to block Harmonix’s games. Viacom (owner of MTV) has yet to respond.
Seems like a grey area for Konami, but why not fight it after the success of Rockband. Although, why haven’t they gone after Activation, the publishers of Guitar Hero?
We’ll bring you more when it breaks.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:46 am
i’m pretty sure konami isn’t going to go after activision if only because ‘guitar hero’ is so ridiculously popular. i’m sure if konami took activision to court over it, they could just point out that while everyone loves ‘guitar hero’, nobody has ever played ‘guitar freaks’.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
aaron: Not particularly true; It’s because the rockband guitar/drumset is the same as the Guitar Freaks/Drum Mania. I don’t know if you’ve played Rockband or not but the guitar is different from Guitar Hero’s Guitar.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I’m surprised they didn’t go after EVERYone with that, seeing as they apparently filed in ‘97 and it’s only recently that music genre games have gotten so big. If you note the phrasings “musical-rhythm matching game” and “game controller simulating a musical instrument”.
“Musical-rhythm matching game”? Do you have any idea how many games there are that could probably qualify under that? And, I’m not talking just about MTVs Rock Band and Activision’s Guitar Hero either. If you wanted to look thru all the scads of video games out there, there’s probably some other games out there that could be put in that category too.
“Game controller simulating a musical instrument”? There goes Nintendo for Wii Music too.