Ubisoft sued over Rocksmith

You can tell it's a music game because its publisher is getting sued for patent infringement.

This time it's Ubisoft being sued for Rocksmith, their hybrid music game/learning aide. The patent holder this time is Guitar Apprentice, who claims that Rocksmith infringes on a patent filed by them in October 2010.

The patent is somewhat vague, describing its initial functions as "A method is provided for progressive musical instruction using a media system with processor-executable software modules storing musical performances each having a plurality of segments."

Rocksmith is heavily inspired by Game Tank's Guitar Rising, which allegedly had a playable demo as early as November 2009, quite a while before the patent was filed. Expect Ubisoft to contest the patent's validity.

Staff article by Rhody Tobin (April 09, 2012) Rhody likes to press the keys on his keyboard. Sometimes the resulting letters form strings of words that kind of make sense when you think about them for a moment. Most times they're just random gibberish that should be ignored. Ball-peen wobble glurk.