Ubisoft sued for patent infringement over Rocksmith technology
Guitar Apprentice sued Ubisoft last week for patent infringement on a "media system and method of progressive musical instruction" in USP 8,119,896. Guitar Apprentice filed this patent on October 12, 2010, while Ubisoft's Rocksmith launched on October 18, 2011 in North America and is due to hit Europe and Australia in September this year.
A summary of the Guitar Apprentice patent describes its initial function as follows: "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."
Ubisoft has previously acknowledged that Rocksmith took inspiration and technology from Game Tank's Guitar Rising, and it is currently in a legal dispute with the UK band Rocksmith, who claims it owns all rights to the name.
