Gibson and Activision duel over Guitar Hero Publisher Activision has asked a US court to reject a claim made by legendary guitar manufacturer Gibson that the hugely popular Guitar Hero game - even Bill Gates likes it - spanks a software patent owned by the plank producer. Gibson has yet to file a formal complaint of its own, but it says it contacted Activision in …
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The rule should be if you have a patent and wish to sue someone who infringes it then you need to have a product of your own out there.
That stops patent trolls patenting every idea under the sun that they can think of.
Gibson will just ruin their image, they're just cashing in on the popularity of this game, something that will actually help them in the long run by introducing people to guitar music and possibly getting them to take up real guitars.
You haven't thought about this very hard have you?
What constitutes having a "product of your own out there." - selling a single product? Possibly to... i dunno.. the companies head of R&D?
Wouldn't really stop anyone would it?
"Gibson will just ruin their image" - yeah - because 99.9% of population actually care!!
"The rule should be if you have a patent and wish to sue someone who infringes it then you need to have a product of your own out there."
Not at all.
However, since software is already covered by copyright, allowing a bit of software to be patented is a boneheaded idea worthy of Bloody Stupid Johnson.
The purpose of patents is to *encourage* innovation. Software patents, however, *stifle* innovation, since even if a programmer discovers a completely novel way to achieve the same result, the *result* of the software is essentially what is patented, and therefor a new and innovative method of reaching that end is *still* subject to patent trolling.
so they licensed their instrument shapes to Activision, and now they are suing because of some patent they claimed they had. Perhaps it is because they have no luck with their digital instrument range, and that they have run out of ideas hence them suing PRS a few years ago
> Guitar Hero was first released in 2005. Activision claims
> that by waiting so long before voicing a complaint, Gibson
> tacitly gave the publisher a licence for its technology.
I imagine this is assuming that the company had access to the codes?
As for such things being patentable: I gather there is no such thing outside the USA. And even there it only got out of hand because a patent trolling attorney is the son of a local judge in some god-forsaken town in Texas.
Gotta be a John Travolta film in that scenario. Or maybe Al Pacino?
Title: The Man From the Eastern District of Texas.
Tit II: The Hangin Patent Judge.
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