Gibson seems to be poking its straw into any hole it can find these days, trying to desperately suck up some of that gooey Guitar Hero money before it's all gone. On Monday, the guitar maker filed a federal lawsuit against major retailers that sell Guitar Hero games, including GameStop, Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Amazon, and Toys "R" Us, seeking to prohibit sales of the games. In a statement released Thursday, the company claimed it took "this action reluctantly, but is required to protect its intellectual property."

Though Gibson has yet to file suit against Guitar Hero owner Activision, the guitar company has made a legal claim alleging that the games (when played with the guitar controllers) violate Gibson's patent for a type of virtual music performance. Subsequently, Activision filed a preemptive lawsuit against Gibson last week, and then publicly dismissed Gibson's patent infringement claim. Most recently, Gibson targeted Guitar Hero creator and former developer Harmonix, its daddy's daddy Viacom and Rock Band co-publisher Electronic Arts for allegedly violating the same patent ... Yeah, our head's spinning too.

[Via Engadget]

Following Activision's filing of a pre-emptive lawsuit last week – asking a judge to dismiss guitar-maker Gibson's Guitar Hero patent claim and later saying it had "no merit" – and then Gibson's lawsuit against major retailers selling the game, Gibson has now filed a patent infringement lawsuit against ... well, not Activision. No, Gibson has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against former Guitar Hero developer Harmonix; Harmonix's parent company's parent company, Viacom; and Rock Band publisher and all around Guitar Hero-less innocent bystander Electronic Arts.

Gibson is claiming the aforementioned companies violate their 1999 patent covering "a system for electronically simulating participation by a user in a pre-recorded musical performance." For their money – even though they're not the ones being sued – Activision claims that "by waiting three years to raise its claim, Gibson had granted an implied license for any technology." Regardless of the outcome or the number of Gibson-branded plastic guitars out there, we suspect it won't be getting a fruit basket from the video game industry this holiday.

Activision has made a formal statement about its lawsuit against Gibson Guitar Corporation's patent claim on Guitar Hero. Activision calls Gibson's squeeze-play a "transparent end run ... on patent assertions that Gibson knows have no merit." According to Activision, Gibson waited three years until this past January to make its patent allegations and only did so after Activision said it was no longer interested in renewing its "marketing and support agreement with Gibson."

Poor Gibson, looks like it's just a little bitter about (Warning: double cliché alert) not seeing the light on its patent many moons ago and missing the boat on a billion dollar franchise. Meanwhile, Harmonix is still making money off the franchise it lost and is currently working out a deal with Activision over the $14.5 million the company says it's due in royalty fees.

Yesterday was a busy legal day for the Guitar Hero franchise, what with Harmonix pulling a $14.5 million dollar royalty suit on the same day Activision decided to address a patent claim from its guitar partners at Gibson. Sure, we're not fancy lawyers with fancy pants, but it strikes us as particularly odd that Gibson managed to work up a deal with Activision – licensing its branding as well as the likenesses of some of its most iconic guitars – well before realizing that, hey! It's already patented this whole thing and owns the rights to a device whereby a "musician can simulate participation in a concert by playing a musical instrument and wearing a head-mounted 3D display that includes stereo speakers."

Turns out that while Gibson told its pals at Activision about the patent back in January, the Big A just filed a lawsuit yesterday asking the U.S. District Court for Central California "to declare Gibson's patent invalid and to bar it from seeking damages." Considering we're talking about a billion dollar franchise, we're sure Gibson's been seeing dollar signs. Perhaps it's afraid games like Guitar Hero are siphoning potential guitar sales away from, y'know, actual instruments ... or maybe it just figured why the heck not. Unless they make nice nice, we figure there's a chance we could see Fender-branded guitars in both guitar rhythm series going forward.

[Via Engadget]

Read – Activision's "Guitar Hero" violates patent: Gibson (Reuters)
Read – United States Patent Number 5,990,405

MTV recently spoke with the lawyer behind the Xbox Live outage class-action lawsuit who is seeking $5 million in damages. Attorney Jason Gibson, a consumer-fraud attorney, comes off very well in the piece and diffuses criticisms that his clients are just cashing in by saying, "When you have one person who is mad and they can't get a response, and they can't get their complaints addressed by a company like Microsoft, the only way to get their attention is in numbers." Gibson says his clients (who are college-educated and in their late 20s and 30s) are not expecting a "windfall or anything like that," they just want to be reimbursed for services not delivered.

Gibson says that others are joining in on the suit and that Microsoft put the cart before the horse this holiday with Xbox Live. He claims that the manufacturer took money for Xbox Live subscriptions without being able to provide the service promised, and that the service should have been ready to handle an influx of consumers. As much as we're happy that Microsoft is giving us a free game for all the drama, the infrastructure should certainly have been there to provide service by this point in Xbox Live's life.

'Tis the season for shredding plastic guitar controllers in a virtual environment for screaming, adoring virtual fans - do you know if your plastic axe can rock with your game? Through playtests and corroboration via other sources, we have combined three handy charts (one for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and now Wii) to let you know what guitar controllers work with what games.

First, the Xbox 360:

Rock Band Stratocaster	Yes	No*	No**
Guitar Hero 3 Les Paul	Yes	Yes	Yes
Guitar Hero 2 Xplorer	Yes	Yes	Yes

Notes:
* Can navigate menus, but during the songs the green button is stuck down, orange is red, and everything else is dead
** Interestingly, the drums are recognized, so you can actually navigate menus using them, but playing songs is a no go.


The PlayStation 3, however, has a much "easier" choice (after the break).