Guitar Hero

Gibson Guitar Corp. said Friday that it had filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Viacom Inc.'s MTV networks and Harmonix, as well as Electronic Arts Inc., relating to the wildly popular "Guitar Hero" video games. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Tennessee, relates to the same patent involved in another suit Gibson filed earlier against various retailers, the Nashville-based guitar maker said. The "Guitar Hero" series has sold more than 14 million units in North America and raked in more than $1 billion since its 2005 debut.

The latest sign of a video-game "Revolution"? You may soon be able to plug in and play guitar in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Martin N. "Marty" Bandier, the top executive at the music publishing company that owns the John Lennon-Paul McCartney copyrights, said he liked the idea of a dedicated Beatles edition of Guitar Hero, Activision Inc.'s hugely popular video-game franchise.

Gibson Guitar Corp., which once harmoniously licensed its name to the blockbuster "Guitar Hero" video games, is strumming a different tune. Nashville-based Gibson claims that Activision Inc.'s "Guitar Hero" violates a 10-year-old patent Gibson owns for a virtual reality music system. Activision says that isn't the case and in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles asked a federal judge to settle the matter. "We believe their claims will not withstand any objective scrutiny," George Rose, Santa Monica-based Activision's general counsel, said in a statement.

I began the strike with lofty plans to write a novel, which soon turned into a novella, which then turned into 13 solid weeks of playing "Guitar Hero III" in my underpants. What I did manage to do was become a United States citizen. (I was born and raised in Canada.) I did it in part because the strike made me feel so patriotic -- I love that this country allows me to carry a picket sign depicting Rupert Murdoch as a money-crazed demon, complete with dollar signs in his eyes, and then go back to work for him the very next day. During my citizenship ceremony, I sat next to a lovely older gentleman from Guatemala.