Konami counter-sued by Viacom over Rock Revolution

by Randy Nelson { Feb 13th 2009 at 2:00AM }

Last July, Konami filed a lawsuit against Viacom, parent company of Rock Band developer Harmonix, claiming the game infringed on patents it held for music titles utilizing guitar controllers. After six months of silence, Harmonix has decided to sue back, claiming Rock Band actually improved on Konami's patents -- and Rock Revolution is, in fact, infringing on Viacom patents. Confused yet?

The gist of Harmonix's counter-suit involves a claim Rock Revolution is actually more like Rock Band than Konami's GuitarFreak franchise, the design of which is likely the basis of the original suit. We naturally picture all of this unfolding Phoenix Wright style, but the reality is most likely far, far less interesting. We'll let you know if any sparks begin to fly.

[Via Shacknews]

Tags: harmonix, konami, lawsuit, rock-band, rock-revolution, viacom

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Markez @ Feb 13th 2009 2:45AM

Preferably they'll actually settle this legal issue as depicted in the picture, a straight up battle between ninja representatives of each company only allowed to use a guitar as a weapon.

In all seriousness, I'd hope the powers that be treat this with the same attitude I have as the same BS we still have to put up with American baseball. We get it, steroids, blah blah blah, let's get over it, everyone gets a free pass, for the love of god please let's just put it behind us.

Sigh. Unless my mom is allowed to counter sue the counter suit counter suit for damages to our intelligence, in that case, then I guess I would be ok with the nonsense carrying forward.

bigsofty @ Feb 13th 2009 10:38AM

Stupid patents, something as obvious as a musical instrument shaped for a music game should never have been allowed to patent... what's next, using a cowboy hat in a western?

Brett from Atlanta @ Feb 13th 2009 3:07AM

I'm suing both of them for getting too greedy. Both of you just take your piles of money and go do something constructive (especially you Konami).

Joystick Hero @ Feb 13th 2009 3:45AM

Makes me wonder how large of a pile of money it takes to build a fort. That's constructive, Wright?

baconaholic @ Feb 13th 2009 10:15AM

Or they could pleasure themselves with hundred dollar bills. I guess that's economic stimulus, right?

Markez @ Feb 13th 2009 3:10AM

Dopo, ciao! Ti odio!

infinityv @ Feb 13th 2009 4:14AM

Viacom should just pay out to Konami the Bemoni games have been around forever.

Honestly I'm surprised Konami didn't start dropping lawsuits long before this.

Sheppy (of the Fidlious Clan of Wong) @ Feb 13th 2009 8:31AM

Konami doesn't even know what's going on with Benami. Seriously, anyone who defends Konami in these proceedings needs a slap in the mouth. It took them 10 years to make Beatmania debut on PS2 in the US, 6 months after 360 launched. They never sold the controller by itself and more laughable, they sold the stand alone disc in a 2:1 ratio to the actual bundle. Take that logic, apply it to guitar hero, and see why I laugh my ass off as both the inventors and the primary reason why music games have been stalled for 10 years, get their own industry yanked out from under them?

I mean no offense but if we waited for Konami to kickstart this game genre, we'd be looking forward to Drop the Bomb Sunset 2K14 mix on PS4 as our first Guitar Freaks experience....

DarkTetsuya @ Feb 13th 2009 12:57PM

Sheppy:

Indeed! On a related note that probably explains why they haven't sicced their lawyers on the 'Scratch: the DJ simulator' game.

If they'd used all this wasted energy suing people that publish a remotely simliar music game (hello, DJ MAX Technika), they could probably put together a half-decent update to that piss-poor first beatmania release.

I mean really, 50 songs, 0 unlocks? when their DDR releases had 70 songs, 30-40 unlocks? UNACCEPTABLE. F-, Konami.

Sheppy (of the Fidlious Clan of Wong) @ Feb 13th 2009 1:23PM

Well not only 50 songs at 0 unlocks but the bulk of those songs were culled from the entire series, as evidenced by the fact that the lineup was split between Beatmania and Beatmania XDII. I mean if you could ask me how Konami could fuck up a US release to such a legendary music series, I couldn't even come up with this stuff.

Of course DDR was a success despite Konami. I mean the first one dropped in the US with a tragically small lineup on Playstation, pads were rare, and it was still using the original interface of discs rather than a menu despite Japan's latest version featuring the 5th mix menu. I mean even Konamix, the year later release, was targically outdated in interface since it too used a previous menu system (4th mix) at the same time the arcade experience was being streamlines with DDRMAX. Of course Konami of Japans first reaction to the games showing up in arcades outside of Japan was to threaten lawsuits so boo to them on all fronts.

I love Beatmania but DJ Max has outclassed them in every possible way and rather than take lessons and evolve, they're still stuck in "we did it first." Which is cute, but Nintendo never sued Sega for Sonic the Hedgehog just because Mario was first.

goldeneyesoldier ( noble prophet of rant and ownage ) @ Feb 13th 2009 5:19AM

i'm a bit confused.

Ghen @ Feb 13th 2009 6:59AM

counter-suits are very common. The best defense is a good offense.

Magresda @ Feb 13th 2009 5:43AM

Rock Revolution was such a disgrace to the music/rythm game genre that it deserves to be sued to hell.

Eggman @ Feb 13th 2009 7:42AM

Their reasoning behind the suit is borderline nonsensical. I would absolutely love to see these magical patents that Viacom improved upon when the Rock Revolution controller is literally the exact same controller as the Drummania controller with a couple of extra inputs and that's existed for years. The mentioning of Beatmania in the suit is even dumber.

This is very likely just meant to force Konami to settle with them and negate their own suit. Which is really dumb.

Sheppy (of the Fidlious Clan of Wong) @ Feb 13th 2009 8:43AM

The Beatmania patent is the first patent in which Konami describes the ability to cue tones or sound effects at button presses to add to a musical track playing in the background. However, in the 10 years that franchise has been around, all Konami has ever done was add two more buttons. When harmonix said they've improved on the patent, that's because whether you hit or miss, you effect the track. Something Beatmania doesn't do. Also, in Beatmania, you only cue up a tone, not portions of a song. So someone playing a song on easy, for example, would sound dramatically different from someone playing the song on hard. Meanwhile Harmonix, from Day 1 on Frequency strived for an "autocapture missing notes" technique which Konami is still years behind. Not to mention Rock Revolution directly steals Rock Bands screen layout.

Which people who actually remember how Konami has basically tyranized the music game genre with their lawsuits will remember that the user interface was actually the ONLY way in which Konami won their laysuits against Pump It Up, In The Groove, and at the very center of their current lawsuit against DJ Max Portable.

Of course if you were a true Benami fan you would know all this. Of course if you were also a Benami fan, you should be rightly pissed that Konami has done everythign in their power to destroy the music game genre by keeping it in one region and threatening arcades that import machines. Of course you're probably just another pathetic Weeaboo who believes the inventor should be the only one making a game genre and actual progress in an industry is a bad thing. In which case, you probably work at GM...

Eggman @ Feb 13th 2009 2:14PM

Oh my god you really have no idea who you're talking to or what you're talking about do you?

Hahahaha no. Trust me, I know a LOT more about everything in the Bemani community than you do.

Whether you hit or miss doesn't affect the song in Beatmania? What are you talking about? If I don't hit a note in IIDX, it doesn't make a sound. If I hit a different note, it makes a different sound and I get a poor. How is that not affecting the song?

Rock Revolution steals the screen layout of Rock Band? WHAT? It's the exact same screen setup as Drummania. It scrolls the same, it looks the same and it works the same. The ONLY thing it has in common with Rock Band is the star power gauge thing in the top right and that doesn't even work the same.

And you have no idea what you're talking about with the other suits either. They won over RoXor because RoXor was using Konami's machines for the game when this was expressly not allowed.

No seriously, just stop. You really have zero clue here.

Sheppy (of the Fidlious Clan of Wong) @ Feb 14th 2009 2:04AM

Actually, I think it's YOU who doesn't understand how these games work. Allow me to explain. Beatmania has a base soundtrack. This song doesn't get effected at all by gameplay. Sorry, it doesn't. If you demand evidence of this, well, hack the shit and see for yourself. The gameplay itself is, in turn, nothing more than adding tones. It's not adding a track to the game like Harmonix's technology, it's playing a sound file from a bank to play over the track itself. This is why, when playing on Easy, the song sounds nowehere near as complex or well composed as a top level song. You can attempt to debate this and it's cute with the attempt. Really. But in the end, what you are doing in Beatmania, is playing a keyboard over a background track. This is why you CAN play other notes and why your playing has no impact on the song. Likewise, missing tones will not screw up the rhythmn like in Rock Band.

Rock Band, meanwhile, works of audio tracks, jus as Frequency did. If you're missing, the track goes bad. If you're hitting, track stays fine. HOWEVER, someone playing on Easy will get the exact same audio experience as someone playing on Expert. Because you are activating a full audio track, no queuing sound effects on a sound board. In other words, the audio in Rock Band and, well hell, damn near every nonKonami music game is years beyond the Beatmania foundation which is the driving tech, to this day, of all Benami titles. This is why the lawsuit mentions Beatmania. Because Guitar Freaks, Drummania, Keyboardmania, hell... Pop'N Music all have their tech based in the Beatmania patent. This is also, by the way, the exact same reason why Konami hasn't progressed the music game industry in the years upon years they've been running it. Seriously. Why was it Harmonix that invented the combo multiplier rather than a counter? Where was Konami on the Star Power thing? Hell, did they EVEN invent Freeze Steps or was that Pump It Up that had them first?

Also, for some reason I was thinking Rock Revolution had guitars on the outside, drums in the middle. Jokes on me because I can only find images of a single guitar. Which actually makes Rock Revolution and even larger joke than previously believe.

Also, you're right about the ITG lawsuit. That one had mentioned the interface in the core lawsuit but looking into that, it was dropped during the trial and they focused on the machine issue.

You see, here is my problem with Konami though. For being the company that invented this genre, they have done everything in their power to make sure it never becomes popular and when other companies actually attempt to advance the genre, they attack with lawsuits. Sure, the case can be made that Konami can make a beatmania on PSP, but they didn't. In fact, the first Beatmania mix ever to be location tested in the US was Gold. Fucking Gold... so when Pentavision made DJ Max Portable, not only did they make a mix better than any Beatmania mix ever crafted, but they also upped the presentation, the whole idea of campaigns, the modes, the interface, and legitimately pushed that genre forward. Their reward for providing competition? A lawsuit. Konami's efforts to adapt and compete? None, nada, zip, zilch.

Imagine if you will, for a moment, John Carmack hits the scene with Catacombs 3D on PC. Now a couple other games get made in the genre suddenly to compete with this product while he works on Wolfenstein. The FPS genre pushes forward thanks to many people working. Wolfenstein gets released and the bar is raised again forcing Blake Stone to find them damn Aliens of Gold. Then Doom drops. Etcetera and so forth. Now if John Carmack acted like Konami, the very first thing he would have done patent the game design. Which, frankly speaking, shouldn't have been a patent that could be awarded but that's a whole other debate. Then, and only then, he makes Catacombs 3D: Masks of the Unsmoothedspritedone. A year later, he makes Catacombs 3rd Edition Append Triple Mix Score added two new enemies. In six months Catacombs makes it return, unchanged, just new levels. Another company gets tired of four years with not a damn single new idea in the FPS genre and decides to release their own game "Tomb of Unknowing" and brings to the table a huge amount of innovation. Carmack, seeing this, decides changing is too hard and this new game outclasses him in every way, shape, or form. If Carmack was Konami, his reaction would be to sue Tomb of Unknowing and continue making Catacombs without any innovations or changes.

This is why I don't understand Konami fantards about this whole ordeal. Most of the competing products you people slam for being ripoffs outclass Konami is every possible way. Konami's reaction is "fuck... changing is hard, let's stick with this." ANY other genre, this would be looked down upon. See: Tony Hawk, Madden, and Tomb Raider. But because it's Benami, it's okay to not progress the genre beyond new songs? Are you REALLY that happy with your 38th remix of Paranoia? As a guy who LOVES music games, I learned to despise Konami long ago. Nothing was changing, nothing was evolving. My copy of Beatmania Red plays EXACTLY like my copy of DJ Troopers. My copy of DJ Max Portable 2 is dramatically changed from DJ Max Portable.

Anam @ Feb 13th 2009 9:10AM

Damn it Viacom, don't spend your money on lawsuits; spend it on completely unethical gifts to Jimmy Page and paying people to stand outside his house, begging for his music!

You gotta start somewhere.

Brett from Atlanta @ Feb 13th 2009 11:20AM

I think it's actually Robert Plant who is the reason why we dont have Zep yet, same reason we dont have a reunion tour. He is "more musically enlightened now" and doesn't want to have anything to do with Zep...what a dick.

Eh @ Feb 13th 2009 12:08PM

Robert Plant has no power in Led Zeppelin, its basically Page's band. He has always been a control freak over the music.

ae86takumi @ Feb 13th 2009 10:40AM

in a sense..Viacom should have to pay Konami some type of license fee or something since they are improving from the original concept. That is if Konami patented it. If not, then they are screwed. On a side note, they deserve to be outdone. Where is Popn' Music Series? Official DDR Konami Metal Controller...wait..we already made those in the US.

jSn @ Feb 13th 2009 11:26AM

It's all pretty lame. To patent a music-themed game that uses a guitar controller? I don't know, c'mon. That's a bit obnoxious. Imagine if they patented Mario like that? Think of how many games would come under "animated adventure platforming game that uses a multiple buttoned controller." Look at that Nintendo - I just started 45,000 different lawsuits for you *rolls eyes*

I'm surprised activision somehow wasn't brough into this suit. How are RockBand and the Konami game SOOoOooOoOoOOoOo similar, yet Guitar Hero - nope, not at all, perfectly original game, completely unrelated to anything - ANYTHING - ever made as a "music based game, with a guitar themed controller."

If I was the judge I'd laugh them both out of court.