Konami Scares and Confuses Me!
A long time ago, Konami brought over some games from Japan to the U.S. that involved video games with interactive dancing and singing using attached peripherals to facilitate the experience. Dance Dance Revolution was a big for a short time, as well as their Karaoke Revolution games. When they introduced these games, they filed patents protecting their intellectual property, which is common for entrepreneurs blazing new ground with new products and new ideas. While Konami never established a specific patent over guitar shaped peripherals, they did file three patents relating to music/rhythm based peripherals. The games mentioned above ran their course, and slowly started to fade from limelight.
Along came Harmonix with Guitar Hero, and the next “hot” video game segment was born. Konami thought that since they had success with the Dance Dance Revolution and Karaoke Revolution games, they should leverage their experience (and naming convention) into a similar game and call it “Rock Revolution.” As well all know, it failed miserably. And as a result, Konami’s inevitable sour grapes reaction was “If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em,” and so in July of 2008, they filed a lawsuit against Viacom for infringing upon three of their patents.
Harmonix didn’t take this lying down, and decided to fight fire with fire by suing Konami in 2009 for infringement against two of their own patents, specifically copyrighting “realistic interaction by a player with a music-based video game using a game controller simulating a guitar,” and another regarding hammer-on and pull-off techniques.
Now, there are many more specifics that I won’t get into; part because they get very technical in terms of copyright law, but mostly because I just don’t understand them. But last week, it appears that a motion was filed by both parties to stay the proceedings (meaning to halt the trial), which means a settlement is probably in the works for Harmonix. Konami’s initial case is still moving forward as planned, but it wouldn’t surprise if all lawsuits were eventually halted.
So what does this mean for us? Well… nothing for now. But if anything changes, you’ll know where to find additional details!
[via Patent Arcade]
You’re missing one important thing in that article. The first guitar hero was released in 2005. Konami’s Guitar Freaks was released in 1998. So, when you say that Konami copied Harmonix, you’re sort of forgetting that Konami created the game seven years earlier. I still think Harmonix did it better, but… they weren’t first.
Jordan Reply:
February 9th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
You’re missing another important thing in that article: Konami never patented a guitar-shaped controller, or the use of which to play a videogame. Harmonix, on the other hand, did, and now has leverage over Konami.