Gibson Sues Activision, Retailers over Guitar Hero

April 7, 2008 by David Kay



Apparently after Gibson found out that Activision was not interested in renewing its marketing and support agreement with Gibson for the Guitar Hero games, Gibson decided to have a hissy fit and sue over a rather dubious 9-year-old patent pertaining to "...simulate participation in a concert by playing a musical instrument and wearing a head-mounted 3-D display that includes stereo speakers." Gibson's patent also mentions audio signals generated by an actual guitar with strings, while the Guitar Hero "guitars" generate no audio signals of any kind and are really just modified Playstation and Xbox gamepads. The suit also demands that retailers Wal-Mart, Target, Toys "R" Us, Amazon.com, K-Mart, and Gamestop stop selling the game. Expect future versions of Guitar Hero to be packaged with plastic versions of Fenders or ESPs.

Source: Gearlog
Comments (2)
frootloops 5 months and 2 days ago

What really sucks is that the guitar that is for the Wii version is even less of a controller then the Playstation and Xbox versions (the Wii remote does most of the work), yet it costs more.

Nonetheless Gibson is just being stupid and should have filed suit about three years ago when Harmonix first released the game with the Gibson SG controller, not AFTER Activision/Redoctane decided not to renew their partnership.
Doodaddy 5 months and 2 days ago

Yet another reason for me to NOT like Gibson. PRS or Jackson plz. =)
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