My wife ordered one of those fancy Pong Clocks for me back in January. Today she received an update from the designers who make the device. And boy what an update it was.

Atari got wind of the clock and, you guessed it, lawyered up and contacted Buro Vormkrijgers.

Basically ATARI demanded we shut down our website immediately, and halt all production. The reason for that; they stated they own the Pong name and game characteristics, on which we were infringing in their eyes. Needless to say we were unaware of such possible infringements when we started this endeavour.

On advice of our lawyer, we seconded those claims, and kept our website live. However, in the meantime we halted all production and other investments, and cancelled our display-order from china, to prevent getting stuck with huge financial damage [these things are very expensive] and stocks that need to be destroyed, if these claims got confirmed. For us the Pong Clock started out as a fun project within our office,that got so much attention, that we then decided to produce and sell it to share the fun with you, not to get bankrupted by.

After a lot of back and fourth, BV and Atari were able to reach an agreement. Atari said they liked the clock and realized that it was really more a homage than a deliberate attempt at infringement. So Atari licensed BV to produce a limited run of 400 Pong Clocks.

This new agreement requires that the clock have some sort of credit to Atari, so BV had to cancel their order for the special LCD screens. Unfortunately, these screens are only made in bulk (think thousands) so BV now has to wait for a larger company to place a big order for them and piggy back on that order. What that means is that I'm still getting my clock, and it will be worth lots more since they are never making any more, but it's going to be months.

BV says in the email they expect some cancellations, so they are still taking pre-orders. Order now, or forever be without Pong Clock.

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