Flickr’d, a real rock band
Konami has sued Harmonix, alleging that Rock Band infringes on several of its music game-related patents. Karaoke Revolution first came out in North America in 2003, several years before both Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Now Konami wants Harmonix to pay up.
Apparently Harmonix hasn’t received the official complaint yet, so it hasn’t said anything in its defense.
Fact: I still see kids playing Dance Dance Revolution in malls.
via Next Generation
This really sounds to me like a case of hurt feelings that they haven’t been cashing in on the music game craze and now want to get a chunk of it without all that bothersome development, publishing and marketing stuff. Why do that when you can just sue someone else who might have developed something similar to your system.
What are they suing about? Using a microphone for voice input into a video game?
,…relate to simulated musical instruments, a music-game system and a “musical-rhythm matching game.”>
So they have the patent on ALL simulated musical instruments? well they better start going after those children’s toy companies who make those amazingly annoying toy guitars too…
Hey wait, didn’t Frequency come out in 2001? That was a music-game system and a musical-rhythm matching game right?
I see this either dragging on forever and not being worth the trouble or eventually gettign thrown back in Konami’s face personally.
Konami did this years ago with In the Groove yelling about how in order to play ItG, you had to mod an existing DDR cabinet. Thing is is that most DDR machines in the USA are illegally imported to the USA. What about Pump it Up? Same exact thing. It just hasn’t become as popular in the USA for Konami to think about suing them.
If Konami is going to cite about how they have a patent on all music games, then they should be going after everyone, not just the companies who are making money. GTA: San Andreas did a DDR style minigame, but they aren’t going after them. It’s bad business, that’s all it is. Konami knows that they’re being beaten, so they sue everybody that does better than them. I’ve always said that Guitar Hero was a rip off of Guitar Freaks, but there were a whole lot of changes. Instead of 3 buttons, you have 5, thinner body, etc. The only real thing that stuck in my mind about similarities is the tilting the body straight up to get star power. Other than that, I think the only people that can sue about the guitars are Gibson and Fender. But wait, they gave permission, didn’t they? =P