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Guitar Hero Maker Sued - Cover Song Too Awesome

Posted by Zonk on from the harshing-your-groove dept.

volpone writes "The band "The Romantics" are suing Activision over their wedding reception favorite, 'What I Like About You,' which appears in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the '80s. The problem is not copyright infringement; Activision had permission to make a cover version of the song. No, the problem is that the cover sounds too much like the original. 'The band's attorneys have indicated that they are seeking an injunction that would force the game to be withdrawn from sale. Although around half of the songs in the newly released Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock feature recordings by the original artists, in previous Guitar Hero games the majority of songs were cover versions.'" In not totally-unrelated news you can download the Mjolnir mix of the Halo theme for play on GHIII, free, today.

3 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Too simple a song perhaps? by mgkimsal2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a pretty darn easy song (many popular songs are) so I'm not surprised to find that it's very 'close to the original'. If they had proper permission to include a 'cover' of it, what did they expect? I love the song, and am a sucker for bubblegum/powerpop type stuff, so perhaps that's why I can't see the problem with the cover here. Won't it potentially drive some more sales for their other stuff from people who learn about them through the game? Or perhaps it's because it's so close people won't bother going to buy the original or other Romantics tunes?

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    creation science book
  2. Re:WTF did they expect? by Ipkat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, the copyright to the song (i.e., the score) and the copyright to their recording of it are two separate things. It's likely they just didn't own the copyright in the score, and whoever did happily licensed it away to Activision. This reminds me of the strange case of Tom Waits v. Frito Lay, in which old Tom was awarded $6 million for "misappropriation of personality" after Frito Lay hired a Waits impersonator to sing in a commercial. You Americans and your crazy IP laws!

  3. Romantics History by bmo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "presumabley they're trying the "sue for the world, settle out of court for what they really want" tactic."

    It's not that. It's "We never got a dime for this shit when it was popular, but now that we have our own stuff back, we'd like to have our contracts followed, thanks"

    They got screwed over by Joel Zuckerman and Arnie Tencer and never saw a dime for "What I like about you" when it was popular. All those Molson and Budweiser commercials? Nothing. Zero, zilch. They had to tour for _7 years_ to finance the lawsuit to recoup _something_, and they eventually won judgments but were unable to collect because Zuckerman and Tencer didn't have any visible assets.

    The only important thing they got back was control of the original copyrights, many years after being popular.

    Given the history of The Romantics, I'm not surprised they're trying to stick up for themselves.

    A history lesson:

    http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=5363

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    BMO