While movie tie-in games are usually poorly made cash-ins on films released around the time the source material is in theaters developer EA has for some time now been breaking the mold by releasing movie licensed games simply on the virtue that the intellectual properties could make for some excellent games. Most recently they released Lord of the Rings: Conquest and The Godfather II.

It seems this heyday of film-based games might be in its twilight hours as EA has suggested they’re shifting their focus away from licensed properties when planning for their future. “The bloom is really off the rose for licensed games,” said Games boss Frank Gibeau in an interview to the LA times. In the same interview he also confirmed that they’re not planning to release another Godfather game, although later an offical spokesperson came forth saying that nothing has been decided as far as the Godfather license.

This can only come as good news since along with some quality gems EA has mixed in a fair amount of generally terrible garbage. Devoting their resources towards their original properties means we’ll see more and better of those. Though the claim that something in the general mentality about licensed games has changed doesn’t hold much water.

After several years of happy partnership with Activision to make the Guitar Hero games someone at Gibson decided that the oodles of money they were probably getting from licensing fees and royalties weren’t enough. The guitar maker sued Activision claiming that the game series infringed on a patent they held for “simulating a musical performance” which was filed in 1999. As you might imagine Activision filed a counter-suit claiming that their product doesn’t infringe upon Gibson’s patent (for a technology that they never actually made I might add).

A US District Court judge ruled yesterday in favor of Activision, claiming that Gibson’s patent only applies to devices that output an analog audio signal and not MIDI signals or any kind of control signals. After all, the guitar controller doesn’t produce any sort of music in and of itself as a real guitar does. Gibson also had a lawsuit out against Rock Band for a similar patent infringement but with this ruling it’s very likely to be dismissed as well.