Konami has sued Harmonix, Viacom, and MTV because they claim Rock Band infringes on three of their patents on instrument based videogames.
But the Konami patents are for products that are much more similar: several different guitar-and-drums music games that the company released in Japan and elsewhere before Guitar Hero and Rock Band ever came to be. The patents fully describe and contain several images of games like Guitar Freaks, Drummania, and Pop’n Music. (Yes, the above is a real illustration from one of the patents.)
Activision actually cites the three Konami patents in question — 6,390,923, 6,425,822, and 6,645,067 — on their home page for Guitar Hero III. Gamasutra concluded last year, though Activision would not comment, that the Guitar Hero maker must therefore have reached an agreement with Konami to license these patents.
Harmonix, then, would seem to have no such thing, although they have their own patents that pertain to music games. So the U.S. District Court for the Eastern division of Texas will have to sort this all out.
Thank goodness patens don’t last as long as copyright. I’m imagining that any one of the defendents could sue back for similar patents that they have. I wonder if Frets on Fire should be worried.