MTV Games finds Konami's Rock Band lawsuit 'surprising'

by Kyle Orland { Jul 11th 2008 at 9:55PM }

Here at Joystiq, we weren't too surprised when Konami decided to jump on the legal bandwagon by bringing a lawsuit against the makers of Rock Band for patent infringement. After all, the rhythm game has made roughly a gazillion dollars and has component parts that bear at least a passing resemblance to Konami games like Guitar Freaks and DrumMania (not to mention Karaoke Revolution, which Harmonix helped develop, and the upcoming Rock Revolution). That said, we're not the ones being sued, so our relative shock at the suit doesn't really matter. That said ...

"Konami's actions are extremely surprising," an MTV Games spokesperson told MTV News regarding the suit. "Unfortunately, successful products such as Rock Band can often become targets for baseless litigation. We have substantial defenses to this claim and intend to vigorously defend it."

The full interview includes more details about the lawsuit and information on the actual patents that Konami claims are being violated. Any budding legal eagles out there want to check them out and give an informed opinion on the merits of the suit?

Tags: drummani, fuitar-freaks, karaoke-revolution, konami, MTV Games, MTV-games, MtvGames, rock-band, rock-revolution

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Moffka @ Jul 11th 2008 10:16PM

I'm not so sure about this being baseless litigation... they have a point, they just may have waited too long to do anything about it.

aristokrat @ Jul 11th 2008 11:13PM

They're definitely going to have a hard time with this because of the long wait. Due to the enormous success that was Guitar Hero II (not to mention Guitar Hero I), Konami has gone a long time not protecting their patent in the face of obvious infringement. I don't know what the window is, but for them to now go after MTV with Rock Band, which is the 3rd generation of these games stateside, the judge is going to ask why they didn't bring suit against the previous games. It would be different if they were minor hits, but everyone in the games industry (and many outside of it) have known about the music genre revolution for some time. Failure to defend your patent can mean implied forfeiture.

fwacce @ Jul 11th 2008 11:56PM

That would be incorrect since Konami was paid for the Guitar Hero games to use their patents. Rock Band gets the lawsuit because they chose not to pay. I can assure you that no matter what MTV says, they are not surprised.

DanB91 @ Jul 12th 2008 12:49AM

@aristokrat
The GH franchise has a license from Konami to use their patent. However RB does not. But Konami did take their sweet ass time

Anticrawl @ Jul 12th 2008 1:32AM

MTV has actually owned the patent pertaining to a game featuring drums since I believe 1998 for Drumscape and not Konami. The lawsuit is just over the music game and guitar aspect which are the only patents Konami holds.

Here is my "sarce"

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16014

RJR @ Jul 12th 2008 11:35AM

How does Donkey Konga fit into all this?

Noshino @ Jul 11th 2008 10:23PM

Pretty much the same as the previous post about this suit, well, this time we know that they are "surprised"

But seriously, how could they be? everyone saw it coming!

Even freaking Gamasutra had an article about the patents surrounding Guitar Hero, not only that, but Harmonix themselves were aware that Konami had these patents

copa @ Jul 11th 2008 10:40PM

Noshino, Rigopolous and others have been on record for a while saying that they have been wanting to produce instrument-based music games for a while.

They had been designing a turntable based game long before Guitar Hero came along.

They had already developed Amplitude and Frequency, which cover every element of the patent except for the instrument.

If Harmonix is able to produce a single design document showing that they had thought about producing an instrument-based game before 2003 (and I strongly suspect they can), you know what that's called?

Prior Art.

And if there's prior art, then it doesn't matter whether Harmonix was aware of the patent when they developed Rock Band, because the patent is worthless.

Noshino @ Jul 11th 2008 10:58PM

I doubt they could, since Rob Kay from Harmonix mentioned that even the idea of Guitar Hero was from the guys at RedOctane

Noshino @ Jul 11th 2008 11:05PM

Excerpt from Iain Simons' book, Inside Game Design

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2801/book_excerpt_inside_game_design_.php

"How did [the Guitar Hero] project concept emerge?

RedOctane had been talking to Harmonix for a while. It was a rental company and then they made dance mats for DDR [Dance Dance Revolution]. It ended up selling a bundle of these dance mats and wanted to progress that side of its business. The company was interested in making a guitar game as they'd seen Guitar Freaks, which Konami had done. So they came to Harmonix with the request, "will you make us a great guitar game for our new piece of guitar hardware?" "

copa @ Jul 11th 2008 11:08PM

Yup. Like I said, they had already done design work on a turntable based game when Red Octane approached them about the Guitar Hero concept.

A turntable is an instrument, so if they can show that they thought about this in 2002 or earlier that's prior art.

Zach @ Jul 11th 2008 10:30PM

Konami should have jumped on this before or during the games release. Waiting until now will make it appear that the company doesn't / isn't protecting its assets.

kataztrophy @ Jul 11th 2008 11:50PM

I thought that was what they were going for...?

copa @ Jul 11th 2008 10:34PM

What a bunch of goddamned pricks.

Harmonix creates Guitar Hero, and turns Red Octane from a bunch of nobodies into a company that gets bought for $100 million by Activision. They show their gratitude by turning over development of GH3 to a bunch of hacks, stiffing Harmonix on royalties, and basically shitting all over them every chance they get.

Harmonix creates the enormously successful Karaoke Revolution franchise for Konami, giving them a rare string of hits in the US. But as soon as Harmonix dares to create their own game, Konami tries to bury Harmonix in litigation.

Konami and Activision are filled with talentless people who hate and envy Harmonix for being creative and successful. They feel that they are entitled to profit from the things Harmonix does, that they can't do themselves.

Sora267 @ Jul 11th 2008 10:36PM

"They feel that they are entitled to profit from the things Harmonix does, that they can't do themselves."

Replace "Harmonix" with "developers" and you've got pretty much every games publisher out there.

Sora267 @ Jul 11th 2008 10:37PM

*And you're describing...

Wow, my sentences don't make any sense tonight...I need some sleep lol.

Anonymous.Skull @ Jul 12th 2008 12:41AM

Agreed.

OneTopJob6 @ Jul 13th 2008 10:16AM

Hey, Neversoft are NOT a bunch of hacks.

Haggard @ Jul 13th 2008 4:00PM

They made some of the best skating games ever, but that may be because they made some of the only skating games ever.

It doesn't mean that they can make a completely unrelated game; I'm good at writing but that doesn't make me a good choice for composing an album.

Sora267 @ Jul 11th 2008 10:35PM

They find it surprising? Really? 'Cause I don't, and I sure as hell know anyone else who knows their facts isn't.

Sora267 @ Jul 11th 2008 10:37PM

*isn't surprised either

invaderalex @ Jul 11th 2008 10:46PM

quarto posts!
A NEW RECORD!
Sora267 you win at the internet...
enjoy your fifteen seconds of glory... MAKE THEM LAST!

Sora267 @ Jul 12th 2008 12:42AM

I spent them taking a whiz. =(

Phish @ Jul 11th 2008 11:04PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Freaks

hmmm?.....

wait..konami made games with plastic instruments before Harmonix??...no waii!!

it really is a shame, if Konami could've jumped on this and made GuitarFreaks and Drummania with american music...they could be rolling in this dough.

But i do remember reading something weird about rythm games saying that MTV holds the rights to make American rhythm games, and Konami holds the rights to make Japanese rhythm games

gohmifune @ Jul 12th 2008 1:35AM

As I understand it, MTV, for all intents and purposes stole the idea of DrumMania beat Konami to the arcade market, and by proxy the home market, thus no DrumMania. I assume this expands into other areas, which is why we never got any of the instrument based Bemani games, just Beatmania and DDR. It would also be a shame if this was the reason why we never got another Taiko Drum Master.

Sheppy (of the Fidlious Clan of Wong) @ Jul 12th 2008 1:54AM

You know, you have a point... one which has been made many times and I'm sure as shit positive another 30 idiots will make the same point, but here is my point. It's quite pointy.

If the rhythm game industry MUST wait for Konami to make the move every Bemani fan believes they are entitled to, America may see Guitar Freaks SOMETIME in 2031. You people forget, DDR wasn't a hit because Konami worked hard to make it so. DDR hit big despite Konami's efforts. For example, when the first machines hit a few arcades locally, Konami basically sent out cease and desist letters claiming music licenses and all that jazz. By the time third mix dropped, Konami was powerless to stop it and instead threatened to sue tournaments which recorded the gameplay screens claiming copyright protection. When this failed, Konami, reluctantly, dropped a halfassed effort on Playstation and discovered... holy shit, this thing they were fighting was popular and they immediately launched a few more mixes (Disney race and Konamix).

Now look at Beatmania, the longest running of the entire Bemani franchise, and how 14th Mix Gold is the first mix EVER to be site tested in the US... or how crappy the PS2 port was.

Basically, if we WERE waiting for Konami to get their ducks in a row, nothing would ever happen, we wouldn't have seen this genre take off, much less become over saturated... but hey, at least the Konami loyalists could claim solidarity in their support and ultimately glad they could whip these games out at anime conventions with "real music" instead of the "gross" American stuff...

Jhongerkong @ Jul 11th 2008 11:17PM

Konami will sue isnt a meme for no reason

John McPoop (PSN:johnnynumber5) @ Jul 12th 2008 1:04AM

Money talks!

notnato @ Jul 12th 2008 2:50AM

no. Konami and everyone else are in the game biz for the love. and you'll never convince me otherwise.

FSK405K @ Jul 12th 2008 3:26AM

By Konamis's logic, Magnavox should be able to sue Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, and every other controller producer for copying their "control stuff on a screen with a hand-held gaming device" patents.

ManekiNeko @ Jul 12th 2008 7:08AM

Heh, nobody would know baseless litigation better than a division of Viacom. This is the same company that stole someone's YouTube video, then insisted that YouTube remove a clip from the show that stole the video.

Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone only has a problem with theft when he's the steal-ee, not the stealer. Rock Band is hugely derivative of Guitar Freaks, and Konami has every right to sue to protect their intellectual property... just as Viacom has done to YouTube in the past.

I just wish that Konami had strengthened their case by releasing Guitar Freaks in the United States, rather than leaving it in Japan. How could they not have known that a game like this would be a smash hit in the country that practically invented rock and roll?

Noshino @ Jul 12th 2008 10:36AM

People here are just defending Harmonix because of Rock Band, but they seem to forget that Viacom, the parent company, has a worse suing record than that of Konami...

After all, the nickname of Dr. Evil for Mr Redstone and the bad fame of the Viacom lawyers is for a reason...

You guys are defending the company that wants Google to share all of the personal information from Youtube users? Nice...