Could it be that the court ruling that ruled against KC was biased?

[Prosystemsearch]

I might be called an over-analyzer, but does anyone else wonder exactly why the court that oversaw the legal battle between Magnavox and Atari Inc. ended up ruling in favor of Atari? I find it at least somewhat suspicious that other pacman clones and derivatives such as Vectrex Clean Sweep and the arcade hack known as Pirhana NEVER EVEN got charged with anything! I sometimes think that Atari and the Court were in cahoots and that Atari had a special hatred for Magnavox and KC Munchkin.

[SoundGammon]

Years ago Magnavox sued Atari and Atari had to delay the release of the 2600 a year because of it!

[Prosystemsearch]

Years ago Magnavox sued Atari and Atari had to delay the release of the 2600 a year because of it!

How does that mean it was okay for Atari to be utter Jackasses with their claim "infringement" and use the legal system in their favor to force Magnavox to stop making more KC munchkin carts?

[SSG]

Sounds sketchy.

[Prosystemsearch]

Sounds sketchy.

 

Please think about it for at least a little more. Why didn't why sue the makers of Clean sweep for Vectrex, but go ALL out and take Magnavox to court on this game? I think either they were very biased with a special hatred of Magnavox, or that PLUS secret bribes with the state court that they went to to file the lawsuit against Magnavox

[SSG]

 

Please think about it for at least a little more. Why didn't why sue the makers of Clean sweep for Vectrex, but go ALL out and take Magnavox to court on this game? I think either they were very biased with a special hatred of Magnavox, or that PLUS secret bribes with the state court that they went to to file the lawsuit against Magnavox

Maybe they were afraid the Magnavox 2 would take off and wanted it shut down.

[Prosystemsearch]

Maybe they were afraid the Magnavox 2 would take off and wanted it shut down.

Hmmm...

 

You could say the same thing for the Colecovision taking off. It did, despite a lawsuit that ruled against Atari's claims.

[carlsson]

This blog entry speculates that it was Magnavox/Philips first mover advantage and the fact the 2600 version of Pac-Man is not as pretty as one would have preferred, that caused Atari to sue. Also note that they lost in the first case, and not until they appealed for a second time, they won.

http://www.mathpirate.net/log/2009/10/18/electronic-curiosities-pac-man-vs-k-c-munchkin/

 

On the other hand, Clean Sweep emerged after the 2600 Pac-Man and includes roughly as many, though different changes over the original maze game so it is not clear that Atari would've won a case on default. There were other cases of infringement though, e.g. vs Crazy Moonie/Crazy Pucker on the VTech Creativision, another game by Soundic and of course when Commodore decided to sell HAL Labs' Pac-Man (licensed only within Japan) worldwide. Many of those were reprogrammed to not be exact copies of Pac-Man, and then got by with doing it. Those cases must've happened after the first court case above.

[CatPix]

Plus, Munchkin is an in house, first party game, meanign that Magnavox could not claim to not have know the game content.

Most of the clones were usually published under the desk, or really programmed by third party companies on non-official carts.

For example, Muncher on the Astrocade was first available by mail order only from an Astrocade magazine, and was sold as a "demo cartridge". It was later published by Spectre Systems which was a puppet name for Astrovision to sold the game under a working commercial name (Muncher) rather than the obscure demo cart thing.

[SSG]

Plus, Munchkin is an in house, first party game, meanign that Magnavox could not claim to not have know the game content.

Most of the clones were usually published under the desk, or really programmed by third party companies on non-official carts.

For example, Muncher on the Astrocade was first available by mail order only from an Astrocade magazine, and was sold as a "demo cartridge". It was later published by Spectre Systems which was a puppet name for Astrovision to sold the game under a working commercial name (Muncher) rather than the obscure demo cart thing.

 

Gotta pay attention to the fine details of everything.

[ScottyDont00]

Seems like everyone else used loop holes or didn't piss off/bother/scare Atari as much Magnavox did... I think its a shame. I can only imagine what gaming might look like today if Magnavox lasted around the world( I know they did better outside the US) and actually saw the launch of Odyssey 3. The prototype O3 systems that people have found are awesome and the graphics homebrew developers are putting out on the G7400's look great. Might not be that much different but another huge competitor might have brought some pretty cool games and upgraded systems faster then when we got them..