Harmonix and EA are blatently lying about Wii Guitar Compatability!

[alpha_dk]

RPGJock said:

rasone77 said:
@Qxymeth

The entire point of this thread was the fact that I got my WiiCuitar to work on my laptop with out any specialized code from Actvision. I can play frets on fire perfectly and all I used was a program that emulates the classic controller.
This means that compatability is in fact NOT up to Activision at all but rather a result of porting the PS2 version and them using the PS3 incident to cover it up.

  

Its up to Activision if they own the rights to the product.  Just cause you used a non sanction program to get a peripheral to work with a freeware game doesn’t mean that Activision doesn’t care.  It means that Activision is not worried about those few individuals that goes through the trouble to hack a free game and the peripheral to play it on a PC.  What they do care about is another company sells a direct competition game that uses their Gibson licensed IP owned controller and makes a profit off of it with no share of the revenue.  That is the difference here.

 And if Activision is pushed into defending their license in court by a company ignoring thier wishes, then you will see a snowball effect where they will cut support for 360 version and your freeware game mod as they must show an across the board protection for their IP patent.  Just how Gibson has to sue Activision, EA/Harmonix, and retailers for selling the "interactive simulator with a peripheral device".  They have to show that they are protecting they patent.

Patents don't have to be protected.  Patents are a paid-for monopoly on a technology/invention/business method, where if someone infringes you have the choice to prosecute or not, but regardless of whether you do you still hold the patent and can prosecute at any time (barring other contractual obligations such as licensing, etc.) I can patent something new tomorrow, and sit on it until the day before it expires while people infringe on it all over the place, and I am still able to sue for past infringement.

You're thinking trademarks.  If you don't protect your trademark you lose it.  Copyright and Patent are guaranteed even if you don't protect it.  It's just, if you don't sue you don't make money (assuming people aren't licensing it at least).

That said, you cannot protect how people use your technology through patents no matter what.  If I make a widget that I want people to use with the Wii, and people want to use it with their computers, that's not covered by patent law.  Depending on what my widget does, it *may* be covered by copyright law, but it is explicitly not covered by patent law (IANAL, TINLA).