Officials from
Rock Band publisher MTV Games have responded to the lawsuit filed by
Guitar Freaks and
DrumMania publisher Konami last week, describing the move as “extremely surprising”.
An MTV/Harmonix spokesperson has told Gamasutra that "unfortunately, successful products such as
Rock Band can often become targets for baseless litigation. We have substantial defenses to this claim and intend to vigorously defend it."
Konami officials have indicated that it is against company policy to comment on pending litigation.
As
recently reported the three patents in question date from 2002 and 2003 and relate to “simulated musical instruments”, a “music-game system” and a “musical-rhythm matching game”.
Rock Band developer Harmonix’s first game to feature a proprietary controller was the original Guitar Hero in November 2005, while Konami’s first
Guitar Freaks arcade games was released in 1999.
As
exclusively revealed by Gamasutra last year, Konami licensed some of its patents to
Guitar Hero III publisher Activision. No such deal has ever been reported with MTV Games.
