Harmonix Suing Konami Over Rock Revolution

Keane Ng

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Harmonix Suing Konami Over Rock Revolution



Viacom and Harmonix are filing a complaint against Konami, claiming that Rock Revolution violates a patent for controllers that simulate musical instruments.

Games industry lawsuits are always a tangled web, but here's a particularly messed up one: Harmonix and its parent company Viacom are suing Konami over a patent for game controllers that mimic musical instruments, like the guitar and drums used in Rock Band and Guitar Hero. The complaint, which was filed yesterday in Boston, demands that Konami cease sales of their own music game Rock Revolution and pay Harmonix and Viacom compensation for the infringement, according to Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a0AELrnWrYbg&refer=japan].

It seems they're returning the favor for last July, when Konami sued them for infringing on two of its own patents for music game controllers. The irony of it is that Harmonix, though they'd be quick to file a complaint about Konami infringing on their patents, will readily admit that their ideas aren't exactly their own. In the patent in question, Viacom and Harmonix cite Konami's own Beatmania games as a direct inspiration for their own products, which they argue stand on their own as improvements of earlier music game controller-instruments.

So, they're suing Konami for infringing on their ideas that they themselves admit are based on Konami's original products? It's gotta bite for Konami, seeing yourself sued over an idea that you arguably came up with in the first place. On top of that (and Rock Revolution's mediocre sales), it's not even like Rock Revolution was aping that much from Rock Band, at least when it comes to the instruments. The game only comes with its own drums and requires either Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitars, so it would seem that Viacom's suing Konami solely over their drum kit?

I might be missing something here in the midst of all this legal spit fighting, but, by this logic, shouldn't Viacom be suing Activision for Guitar Hero World Tour?

[Via Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22326]]

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Tony Harrison

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I think Activision use Konami's patents, but then it's probably nothing to with the patents anyway. It's all quite pathetic really. Harmonix are quite shameless, Konami chasing toy guitar patents is not exactly dignified but at least they had some history to support them.
 

Keane Ng

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mattttherman3 said:
Rock Revolution was such a bad game it deserves to lose the lawsuit just because of that.
If you lost your money to Rock Revolution, you deserved the bad game you got for not seeing it coming.
 

Shadow Law

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why would they sue over the controls looking like instroments? so no other game designers can ever make a music game ever again?
 

Teh_Doomage

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That's actually pretty funny. Konami started it, guess this just proves people don't know their roots.
 

Soap6

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Tenmar said:
If I'm not mistaken didn't Konami's Rock revolution come out first?
No, Rock Revolution came out after Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero:World Tour.
 

mattttherman3

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Keane Ng said:
mattttherman3 said:
Rock Revolution was such a bad game it deserves to lose the lawsuit just because of that.
If you lost your money to Rock Revolution, you deserved the bad game you got for not seeing it coming.
I didn't buy it, I don't buy those games, I think they all suck, my friend bought it though, because he's a whore for every game that comes out
 

RavingPenguin

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Soap6 said:
Tenmar said:
If I'm not mistaken didn't Konami's Rock revolution come out first?
No, Rock Revolution came out after Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero:World Tour.
I do believe your wrong, I think Rock Revolution was an japanese arcade game made by Konami before rock band was created.
 

Fuzzykittensmith

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I've actually been involved first hand in a situation similar to this. But even without my experience, it shouldn't be very difficult to tell that it is probably pretty offensive to the people who did it first.
 

TheBluesader

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This is all going to be really funny in 3 years when everyone finally gets totally bored with this explosion of plastic instrument games and we never see one again.

Of course, way things are going, by then the only money Konami will have is whatever they can manage to sue out of people who make better games. They should just change their logo to a plastic guitar man pulling dollar signs out of the air and be done with it.

(A guitar came with my copy of Guitar Hero, and I liked that game, but now that I'm done with it I have a plastic guitar controller I'll never use again. I played Rock Band once, and the guitar hurt my hand and the drums barely worked. So I'm sort of done with this music game thing already. See you all in 3 years...)
 

Theo Samaritan

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RavingPenguin said:
Soap6 said:
Tenmar said:
If I'm not mistaken didn't Konami's Rock revolution come out first?
No, Rock Revolution came out after Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero:World Tour.
I do believe your wrong, I think Rock Revolution was an japanese arcade game made by Konami before rock band was created.
You are getting confused a bit. Konami had two arcade games - GuitarFreaks (read: Guitar Hero) and DrumMania (read: Rock Band Drumkit). The machines could be linked in order to have co-op playing in the arcade. There were also home versions of the individual games but they never made it to the west.

With DJ Hero coming, the final nail in Konami's crown will be hammered in, as the only screenshots of one of the many DJ rythm matching games that are coming are quite frankly so close to BeatMania that they may as well call it that.

EDIT: I hasten to add that all of these machines came out last decade. We're talking 1990's ideas here, its just Guitar Hero did to us what DDR did to Japan years ago. I'm waiting for "Dance Hero" so I don't get heckled for being good at DDR in the arcade.