Gibson Guitars continued its crusade to defend its 1999 music-game patent, filing an infringement lawsuit against Harmonix, Electronic Arts and MTV Networks for their music game Rock Band.
Rock Band shipped for PS3 and Xbox 360 during the 2007 holiday season to compete against Activision’s Guitar Hero 3.
Gibson filed a similar patent-infringement lawsuit against Activision for Guitar Hero. The company has also filed suit against Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com and three other retailers for selling the Guitar Hero games. Presumably, “selling Rock Band” will be added to those suits.
A statement from Gibson Guitars regarding its March 20 lawsuit against Harmonix and MTV reads:
Gibson Guitar had made good faith efforts to enter into a patent license agreement with the defendants in this case. The defendants have not responded in a timely manner with an intent to enter into negotiations for a patent license agreement. Gibson Guitar had no alternative but to bring the suit, and it will continue to protect its intellectual property rights against any and all infringing persons.
DailyGame will continue to bring you the latest in Gibson’s patent-infringement lawsuits as information becomes available.