The ‘480 Patent

Ralph Baer files the first patent for his Television Gaming & Training Apparatus, United States patent #3,728,480. The patent is assigned to Baer’s employer, government contractor Sanders Associates, and is the first patent filed for the design of a video game. Though Baer will eventually build, and sell the design for, the first home video game, the real reward to be reaped from this patent will be licensing: every company manufacturing a video game console will have to pay Sanders and Baer for the privelege of expanding upon this basic patent, and it stands up in numerous court cases well into the 1980s as the “pioneer patent of the video game industry.”