A judge thoroughly dismissed a lawsuit brought against the makers of Guitar Hero by the rock band The Romantics, saying the band didn’t even own publishing rights to the song "That’s What I Like About You" anymore and that their lead singer wasn’t even party to the suit. Talk about a nuisance case.
The Romantics sued Guitar Hero developers Activision Blizzard and Harmonix (now part of MTV) for hiring a sound-alike band to record its ’79 song, "That’s What I Like About You," for Guitar Hero Rocks the ’80s. But the judge found that the song was properly licensed for use in the game by EMI Entertainment World, which owns the publishing rights to the song.
"Finding that the band had made deals in the ’70s with a record companyand publishing company, who now owned the song and the masterrecording, and also finding that the lead singer was not a party to thelawsuit, the judge said ‘game over’ for the remaining members," said William Hochberg, a Santa Monica-based entertainment lawyer who has covered Guitar Hero and Rock Band for Wired.com, via email.
Having ascertained that Activision Blizzard jumped through thenecessary copyright hoops to license the work for use in itsvideogame, U.S. district judge judge Nancy G. Edmunds dismissed theband’s case last Wednesday (Motion for Summary Judgement .pdf ), ending the band’s attempt to cash in on the song’s inclusion in the game. The band may have had better luck in Europe, where artists enjoy a so-called "moral right" to control how their creations are used even after they have been sold to a third party.
Surely, the makers of Rock Band and Guitar Hero would prefer to include the original recordings — because they can readily afford them and it’s more fun to play to the real version of a song. But as with The Stone Roses’ "I Wanna Be Adored" and several other tunes, players have to make do with a cover version of "That’s What I Like About You," recorded by studio musicians.
Activision Blizzard made about $830 million from the Guitar Hero series in 2007 — more than any other game franchise has earned in asingle year. Although they won’t see any slice of that, The Romanticslikely see the promotional value of having their music included in thegame. Although it was first released a nearly a decade earlier, "What I LikeAbout You" only rose to prominence in the late ’80s after beingfeatured in a Budweiser commercial.
