How Konami thinks they're going to win this is beyond me but for some reason the company has filed papers, suing Viacom and Harmonix in a federal court in Marshall, Texas. The complaint? A patent spanning back to 2002 and 2003 claiming that the companies' have used material too close in likeness to their own.

What exactly is Konami after? Cash compensation and an order to force the two companies to stop using what they feel is too similar to their invention. This allegedly relates to Dance Dance Revolution and the like games (most notably the guitar controllers) developed by Konami, though it was through Konami's lack of proper localization that likely lead to its stunt in growth and rise to competitors products.

What was of particular interest was that when asked about their response to the lawsuit, Viacom replied that weren't even aware it existed.

Tags : guitar hero : harmonix : konami : rock band : Viacom

Comments

By: Snake Plissken

On: 10:34 Jul 10th, 2008
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weren't even aware it existed.

Ouch.

Well this is depressing, for the most part competition is kept quite friendly in the games industry all hat dark stuff tends to stay low key and law suits are few and far between considering the current local tendency to sue anyone for anything especially in America.

Well I hope it gets sorted quickly, no one needs this stuff happening.

By: Dragonfly

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On: 12:45 Jul 11th, 2008
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You know, I'm actually more surprised this didn't happen sooner.

Konami game up with the guitar and drum peripherals long before Harmonix did, although the gameplay system used in the Harmonix games is entirely their own, and goes all the way back to Frequency on the PS2.

It'll be interested to see how this turns out.

By: Evren

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On: 03:57 Jul 11th, 2008
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...Wow...This just isnt going to work. =/

By: kai592

On: 10:25 Jul 21st, 2008
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coincidentally one of konami's game series the "Suikoden" series there is a nation called "Harmonia" which comes very close to the name "Harmonix", as you can see there's only one letter different, maybe this adds to the lawsuit?sounds silly but i did notice this.