Experts on video game history, and Vectors...

ixtlann

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How possible is it that Atari/whoever those producing Vector games were able to avoid royalties to Ralph Baer/Sanders associates?

All I know for sure is that when Nintendo almost beat the Royalty issues for Videogames being magnavox odyssey/ ralhp bear/ sanders associates right to license, Nintendos argument that tennsi for two being a predacessor to brown box was a great argument, and allegedly lost purely based on tennis for two not using standard video signals there for could not be considered a video game (hooked to a scope or radar )
Discuss.
 
Well, wasn't the first vector arcade game Space War, a variant of the 1962 Spacewar! computer game that also used a vector display (and which I believe was also set up pay to play somewhere at some point).
 
Well, wasn't the first vector arcade game Space War, a variant of the 1962 Spacewar! computer game that also used a vector display (and which I believe was also set up pay to play somewhere at some point).

Yes the MIT programmed Digital equipment corporation, Programmed data processor, is considered the first "computer game" or first DIGITAL computer game

Curious otherwise seemingly interchangeable terms, I wonder If that made commodore for instance not liable for Royalties based on odyssey/brown box "video game console" licensing rights... since C64 was a computer! kind of! as well as Odyssey 2 (sporting Keyboard C64 style) made by Magnavox, but nothing to do with brown box/ Ralph Baer/ Sanders Associates
 
How possible is it that Atari/whoever those producing Vector games were able to avoid royalties to Ralph Baer/Sanders associates?

Discuss.

Baer's patent didn't apply to vector games like Asteroids (so says Baer) only to raster games.

The pay version of Spacewar you're talking about is probably Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck's Galaxy Game.

Keith Smtih
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/
 
Baer's patent didn't apply to vector games like Asteroids (so says Baer) only to raster games.

The pay version of Spacewar you're talking about is probably Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck's Galaxy Game.

Keith Smtih
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/

That is exactly what I was curious about, because it seemed based onNintendo almost win and how they lost the case, that vector games would not have royalties!
 
Nolan Bushnell has said that he could've won the case regarding Pong but didn't want to spend the time and resources. So instead he gave Ralph Baer a "junk royalty' (less than 1%) to get him to shut up. Basically Nolan Bushnell said Ralph Baer was upset that the Odyssey wasn't selling that great so he was trying to leach onto others' success.

I could be wrong, but wasn't Pong the only game that Atari ended up paying out royalties for to Sanders?
 
Maybe, but I personally doubt that Atari would have won in court. While I haven't studied it in detail, my understanding is that in the case (Magnavox vs. Chicago Dynamic Industries et al), Judge Grady ruled that the "507" patent (Baer and Magnavox had a number of them - the 507 patent was actually Bill Rusch's patent, not Ralph Baer's) covered a player hitting a moving spot on the screen and causing to change direction, which is pretty broad.

A key matter was the meaning of the term "distinct motion" in the patent. One of the defense's arguments was that this meant "predictable" motion (I'm not sure, but I think there were referring to the fact that in the patent, the motion of the ball after hitting the paddle depended on where on the paddle it hit) and that because, in their games the motion of the ball after hitting the paddle couldn't be predicted, the patent didn't cover them. Grady ruled that "distinct motion" merely meant that the motion was different after it hit the paddle.

The judge also called Baer's 480 patent the "pioneer patent" in the industry and that it was broad enough to cover much more than just Pong games.

Then there's the fact that Magnavox had hard evidence of Bushnell having seen the Odyssey at that product demo (he'd signed the guest register, which Baer had kept).
Grady had this to say about Bushnell
" Here again Mr. Bushnell and his associates were highly sophisticated people in the electronic field, and they even had a little bit of experience in a sub-art, games and machines of that kind. Yet there is no real evidence which I find persuasive that Mr. Bushnell had conceived of anything like the Pong game prior to the time that he saw the Odyssey game. When he did see the Odyssey game, what he did basically was to copy it."
According to Baer, Bushnell later admitted in court that Pong had been inspired by what he saw at the demo, but that after the licensing deal he (Baer) was told by his lawyers to avoid mentioning this. Of course, Baer may be blowing smoke but I think his story has been confirmed by others (and while Baer is obviouisly, and justifiably, angry about the whole thing, I don't think he's making this up out of whole cloth).

Also according to Baer Bushnell met with Tom Briody, Magnavox's chief patent counsel, before the trial started and was "anxious" for settlement and felt that the "Magnavox's [licensing] umbrella could help keep out the pirates" (quote from Baer's book Videogames: In the Beginning)

Baer also claims that by 1980, Atari had paid Magnavox over $3 million in royalties for a number ofcoin-op games and cartridges.

Bushnell's claims about Baer (if he made them) may be true, but given his propensity to, shall we say, stretch the truth, I doubt it.

Of course, it's possible that had they gone to trial, Atari's lawyers could have come up with a more persuasive argument and won the case, but again I'm doubtful.


Keith Smith
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/
 
Yet there is no real evidence which I find persuasive that Mr. Bushnell had conceived of anything like the Pong game prior to the time that he saw the Odyssey game. When he did see the Odyssey game, what he did basically was to copy it."
According to Baer, Bushnell later admitted in court that Pong had been inspired by what he saw at the demo,

Copy it! Hah! Was home pong non digital non solid state with no cpu etc likethe brown box?
 
I believe the whole "digital/analog" came up the trials and was deemed completely irrelevant since the patents covered the concept and the gamplay, not the technology.

Ralph Baer goes into much detail about the whole digital/analog argument (which he considers nonsense) here:

www.pong-story.com/RHB_getting_things_straight.pdf

Now Baer is obviously very bitter about the whole thing and I don't agree with everything he says, but in addition to dismissing the argument as a red herring, he claims that
  
"On top of that, most of the circuitry we designed to accomplish these requirement was undeniably digital….the Brown Box unit…uses flip-flops for the reversal of the ball after coincidence. Both systems generate a digital coincindence…signal by AND-ing the rail-to-rail ball and paddle signals in diode AND gates. These are DIGITAL circuits - no ifs, ands, or buts about it."

He also says that while they WERE built with discrete components that was because they tried early TTL ICs but they were too expensive and power hungry at the time.

Whether you agree with his arguments about the Sanders games being digital is a different question, but I don't think it would have mattered in determining whether Atari infinged on the patents or change the fact that Nolan Bushnell copied the idea for the gameplay.
 
In the argument of cpu vs non cpu in the argument of saying he copied it.
I mean because c'mon, its okay if you do it on a vector /radar/ scope because the video signals are different...but not a tv? really lol
Just saying, however the information you have about it being digital is interesting and new to me. Makes a fair bit more sense now.

I believe the whole "digital/analog" came up the trials and was deemed completely irrelevant since the patents covered the concept and the gamplay, not the technology.

Ralph Baer goes into much detail about the whole digital/analog argument (which he considers nonsense) here:

www.pong-story.com/RHB_getting_things_straight.pdf

Now Baer is obviously very bitter about the whole thing and I don't agree with everything he says, but in addition to dismissing the argument as a red herring, he claims that

"On top of that, most of the circuitry we designed to accomplish these requirement was undeniably digital….the Brown Box unit…uses flip-flops for the reversal of the ball after coincidence. Both systems generate a digital coincindence…signal by AND-ing the rail-to-rail ball and paddle signals in diode AND gates. These are DIGITAL circuits - no ifs, ands, or buts about it."

He also says that while they WERE built with discrete components that was because they tried early TTL ICs but they were too expensive and power hungry at the time.

Whether you agree with his arguments about the Sanders games being digital is a different question, but I don't think it would have mattered in determining whether Atari infinged on the patents or change the fact that Nolan Bushnell copied the idea for the gameplay.
 
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