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Konami, creators of Dance Dance Revolution, Karaoke Revolution and Drum Mania rhythm games (and the Metal Gear Solid series), sued Viacom/Harmonix, creators of Rock Band, for patent infringement (this patent). Viacom/Harmonix claim they are doing nothing wrong and have their own patent to prove it.
Any guesses as to what this means for Rock Band 2? Probably nothing; The lawsuit was filed now to screw Viacom/Harmonix as much as possible (with Rock Band 2 planned for September) and I’ve never, in the history of the human and dinosaur world, seen one of these strong-arm lawsuits ever stop a new product from getting released.
Doesn’t someone sue Apple almost every time they are about to release a new product? Yea, so those are super-effective.
Thanks VE3D!
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July 11th, 2008 at 1:06 am
nice pic
July 11th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Haha, yea I’m pretty much the best graphic artist around
July 11th, 2008 at 11:19 am
I hate these lawsuits, but Konami was pioneering the music-rhythm genre well before Harmonix had a product on the market. Drum Mania, Keyboard Mania, BeatMania, Guitar Freaks, ParaParaParadise, and Dance Dance Revolution are all under the “Bemani” series of games and have been in arcades since 1997 (1999 for GF/DM). In fact Guitar Freaks & Drum Mania allowed you to link the cabinets and play together on both, creating a RockBand-esque experience.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had taken out some patents on the controllers/ideas.
IANAL, but from skimming the patents, it seems that Konami’s patent could qualify as prior art to the Harmonix one, thus invalidating it. (In fact the Harmonix one even refers to Beatmania [the first Bemani game] in the patent). There is no mention of Guitar Freaks in the Harmonix patent.
Now I love both companies (GuitarFreaks only had 3 frets on the controller, but had some crazy difficult note charts), and want MORE music rhythm games, so can’t they all get along?!?!?!
*Coming from a person with a quite impressive display of plastic “instruments” — heck I have a Japanese PS2 just for playing Bemani titles… :)*
July 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Laurence, great followup. I wasn’t aware that Konami had *that* many rhythm titles under it’s belt, especially given the “Band nature” of some of them, it sure does make the case for Konami more firm with the prior-art claim.
Is the idea that they didn’t sue Guitar Hero because GH doesn’t have the complete instrument set *yet* like it will in World Tour but Rock Band did?
Or maybe Viacom has way more money