Games for magnavox odyssey8/9/2023 ![]() ![]() But despite the fact that Pong could be seen as an advertisement for the game console more than for a competitor, Magnavox sued. Meanwhile, sales of the Magnavox Odyssey spiked because of the success of Pong, as consumers bought Baer’s brown box so they could play their favorite arcade game at home. Atari settled for $1.5 million and licensed the technology from Magnavox in order to continue to market Pong and other video games that followed. Supposedly, fledgling Atari’s lawyers advised the company that it could beat Magnavox at trial, but that the cost of litigating that case would exceed Atari’s finances. A financial boon for Magnavox (in lawsuits) Magnavox, however, noted that Baer’s broad-ranging patent covered any technology that used electrical circuits to control dots on a standard television screen. One could argue that Magnavox had no legal claim to the game of table tennis itself, and its creation was just a means by which to electronically simulate that game, using processes Atari had engineered on its own. An article in the Journal of Intellectual Law details the evolving legal environment surrounding video games in that era. It has been speculated that Magnavox waited for Atari to make enough money from Pong to be worth suing. In April 1974, Magnavox filed a patent infringement suit against Atari and several other companies marketing their own Pong knockoffs. He enlisted programmer Allan Alcorn, who was unaware of Baer’s work and had been led to believe the project was a commission from General Electric, and Alcorn created Pong. One of the built-in games was Table Tennis.Ītari founder Nolan Bushnell saw the Odyssey at a Magnavox product showcase in 1972 and came away with ambitions for making a superior product. The hardware inside the little brown box allowed players to manipulate graphics on a television screen. In the summer of 1972, Magnavox unveiled the Odyssey, the first home video game console. Sanders Associates licensed Baer’s invention to Magnavox. In March 1971-still a full year before the events at Andy Capp’s Tavern-Baer filed for the first video game patent, which he later received. His employer, a military contracting outfit called Sanders Associates, was intrigued and financed the development of Baer’s so-called “game box.” He grabbed a legal pad and a pencil and sketched out a plan for a mechanism to play video games on an ordinary TV set. As detailed in a 2014 tribute, Baer experienced a classic “Eureka!” moment while waiting for a colleague. Six years before Atari placed the first Pong prototype in a California bar, a visionary engineer and inventor named Ralph Baer sat on the other side of the country, outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. A “Eureka!” moment-and the first video game patent ![]()
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