ABSTRACT
On April 15, 1974, the Magnavox Corporation filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division for patent infringement related to its Odyssey home video game system. Named in the suit were four companies that had released coin-operated ball-and-paddle video games – Atari, Bally, Allied Leisure, and Chicago Dynamic Industries – alongside one of the country’s largest coin-op distributors, Bally subsidiary Empire. 1 A second suit filed in August targeted Seeburg Industries, its coin-operated games subsidiary, Williams Electronics, and another large Chicago-based distributor, World Wide. 2 In 1975, a third lawsuit targeted Sears over the Atari-made Pong consoles it marketed for home use. 3
