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Originally Posted by NYTimes
At the open house on Oct. 18, 1958, Tennis for Two proved to be a hit beyond Dr. Higinbotham’s wildest expectations. ... Though he may have regretted it later, Dr. Higinbotham never sought a patent for the game. His reasoning was that the game was not such a leap from the initial computer he had used. And the federal government, which finances the lab (Brookhaven National Laboratory), would have owned the patent. The notion of the federal treasury profiting from video games is intriguing.
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It
is, isn't it? 1958: Federal government takes out patent on electronic entertainment system. A penny of every quarter dropped into a Pac-Man goes to Uncle Sam... does it kill the videogame industry, or does it give the U.S. government a major business in Japan and every other industrialized nation across the globe?