Magnavox Co. v. Mattel, Inc.

Sanders & Associates (Sanders) (plaintiff) owned the ’507 patent, which described an apparatus for the display of a hit symbol—a lighted dot—across a screen and the ability of users to manipulate hitting symbols to intercept and alter the dot’s path. The patent claims detailed that the dot would change direction when the hit symbol and a player’s hitting symbol occupied the same space on the screen. The ’507 patent described the use of analog circuits in a television receiver to produce electric signals for gameplay. Magnavox Co. (plaintiff) was the exclusive licensee of the ’507 patent and created a series of television ball-and-paddle games based on the ’507 patent’s content. Connecting the device to the television, players controlled symbols on the screen edges to intercept and reverse a ball’s travel path. The video-game industry eventually introduced microprocessors, allowing for the creation of game consoles that could read data from game cartridges, permitting users to play a variety of games on the television. Using microprocessor technology, Mattel, Inc. (defendant) produced the Master Component console, which allowed users to play multiple sports cartridge games on a television. The console and games were collectively called the Mattel Intellivision. The Intellivision’s games each involved a form of symbol on each side of a screen, such as racquets for tennis, and users could move the player symbols to swing and intercept a ball icon. Due to technological advancements, Intellivision games used processors and digital circuitry to create the game imagery instead of analog circuits. However, the components of the Intellivision’s circuitry were directly analogous to the analog circuitry described in the ’507 patent. Patents from before the ’507 patent, including military targeting programs and various computer systems, contained similarities to the ’507 patent but did not anticipate or show all the ’507 patent’s claim elements or describe anything close to a television game with hitting and hit symbols. Magnavox sued Mattel for patent infringement.