Gibson says, “Wait, now we want MORE cash!”
Gibson Guitars, makers of the legendary Les Paul and other fabulous shredding machines, has decided that even though the makers of Guitar Hero apparently had enough rights to put the Gibson name on the peripherals and in the game, the game itself is violating a patent held by the famous guitar maker. According to reports from USA Today and Yahoo! News, Gibson is not only suing the makers of the game, but also retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target as well, saying that it’s not right that they continue to sell the game. Apparently, Gibson holds a patent on a “technology to simulate a musical performance”. Isn’t it curious how it took them this long to make the determination of this supposed infringement? Clearly, the revenue from the GH games has finally crossed some magical “release the sharks” threshold. Nice going, Gibson. Here is hoping your entire army of lawyers chokes on their cereal tomorrow morning.
In other, (potentially) happier news, the Guitar Hero franchise is going portable, with the announcement that Guitar Hero: On Tour is set to release this June for the Nintendo DS. No longer will you be forced to look like a tool playing air guitar on the bus while listening to your iPod. You’ll have to find another target to blame for your social ineptitute, losers.
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Having some actual patent experience, I went and looked up this Gibson patent. (If you are curious, search for patent 5,990,405 at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/). It does indeed describe a system for simulating a Guitar Hero-like experience, with one significant difference - it talks about using a REAL musical instrument, and not a GAME CONTROLLER mimicking one - which, incidentally, happens to be the subject of another patent held by none other than Harmonix. While that might seem like a minor difference, it’s actually huge, because the intention of the Gibson patent is completely and totally different - it’s meant to enable real musicians to simulate real performances - not pretend to rock on a piece of plastic for personal entertainment purposes. But hey, I guess they decided that Harmonix has made enough money now to make it worthwhile to try to fight this out in the courts - or, more likely, to force them to settle for some nice round sum.