In one year, Atari made a little over $3.2 million dollars. However, there was a black side to this fortune. Atari never patented the design for Pong. Since the game was designed using discreet logic, there was very little they could do to protect their intellectual property. Anyone who owned a machine could open it up, examine the circuit board, and copy it chip for chip. By the end of 1973, there were so many competitors selling Pong style games, that Atari was no longer the leading... [+]