Nintendo won because Atari had copied their lockout chip to be able to run and they raised the case base on copyright and patents. But patents are for inventions, not circuit diseases like the lock-out chip. If I make a virus and then someone makes an anti-virus I shouldn’t then be able to win a patent battle against them for how their anti-virus infringed on my patent! The lock-out-chip is only malware.

Spinnaker’s Adventure Creator manual for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 computers.