Newsbrief: Guitar Apprentice, a company that provides virtual guitar tutorials to aspiring musicians, has filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft, claiming the company has violated one of its patents with its recent instructional music game,
Rocksmith.
Patent Arcade reports that Guitar Apprentice claims ownership of a patent for a "progressive musical instruction" system that teaches users to play an instrument via "audio signals corresponding to a predetermined musical performance."
Both
Rocksmtih and Guitar Apprentice use similar interfaces to teach users to play guitar -- the most apparent difference being that
Rocksmith incorporates interactive elements via the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or PC, while Guitar Apprentice uses pre-set video tutorials on PC or DVD.
Prior to
Rocksmith's release in October 2011,
Ubisoft said the product drew inspiration from GameTank's
Guitar Rising, an unreleased program that explored the basic concepts of interactive music instruction.
