Gibson and the Guitar Games Patent Suits

Amazing how success brings out the patent fights -- which as of now are raging full on between Gibson Guitar and the makers of guitar simulation games. It also doesn't help that the whole history of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games is a bit convoluted.

First of all, Gibson Guitars did get a patent in 1999 for a "System and method for generating and controlling a simulated musical concert experience." And it does kind of describe what Guitar Hero and Rock Band became -- except it doesn't really describe a video game so much as a way for a real musician to pretend he's in a rock concert.

But Gibson didn't seem to worry too much about that -- until Guitar Hero turned into a $1 billion game and Rock Band hit the market as a big success. The earliest version of Guitar Hero came out in 2005. The companies behind it were Harmonix, which created the original game, and Red Octane, which gave the game a boost by creating the game-specialized guitar controllers. Eventually Red Octane got bought by Activision, which turned Guitar Hero into that $1 billion game. Red Octane was bought by MTV, which more recently developed Rock Band.

And now that the games are all the rage, Gibson is suing -- despite the fact that Gibson not only knew about the games all along, but worked with Activision on branding and creating guitar controllers that looked like classic Gibsons. On Friday, Gibson filed suit over Rock Band. Activision has already sued Gibson back, saying the patents are invalid.

What a mess. Basically, it seems Gibson wants a payday from a concept it thought up but never developed. I'm sure there's way more to the story than we'll ever know, but there must have been a better way to figure this out than going to court.

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