Starting a new thread just for Accolade v Sega.

It was nothing personal and I've heard the teams at Sega and Accolade actually liked each-other on personal levels, but you have to remember, in 1992, the entire industry was waiting for someone, ANYONE, to break lockout chips.

The entire industry cheered Tengen on during their lawsuit with Nintendo, but because some ignorant paralegal struck upon the brilliant idea of falsifying credentials and intent to the US patent office, it torpedoed a rock-solid case. I mean, they had it in the bag. Air tight.

And the tragedy of that is that Atari (Tengen) actually busted the 10NES lockout chip like six weeks later in "clean room" operation and was able to successfully bypass it.

But the whole operation was tainted and they never had a shot on the merit of the case once they lied.

There were other lawsuits and the industry was just gobsmacked that Nintendo kept winning.

Sega got in on the action, sued Accolade, but the thing is, the way Tengen lost left the door wide open for that precedent everyone wanted to be set. Atari didn't lose on the case's merit.

It wasn't just that Accolade won on an appeal, but the way that they won. Reinhardt was known as the most liberal judge in America and also has, to this day, the record for most decisions overturned by the US Supreme Court.

But, the logic of how it was on Sega? It was air-tight.

You see, Sega expected to lose the appeal, and the entire gaming industry was waiting for this to go in front of the US Supreme Court. It was inevitable unauthorized games would find their way there eventually, and this was it.

But it's HOW Stephen Reinhardt ruled that ended it.

Sega was prepared to claim trade secrets to the US Supreme Court, an argument that was solid and had been upheld many times.

When Reinhardt ignored the trade secret aspect and focused on the idea of manufactures forcing unauthorized software to label itself authorized, ball game

Sega went from thinking they'd win a 5 - 4 or 6 - 3 decision against the world's most overturned judge to not even having more than a single vote.

And that was all she wrote. Sega ended up settling, and a precedent was set with long-rippling ramifications to computers & gaming.

In fact, Sega was told it was likely they'd not get Justice Scalia's vote. Based on past rulings, they determined an 8 - 1 decision was most likely with Sandra Day O'Conner being the sole vote in favor. Chief Justice Rehnquist was almost certain to rule against as well.