Dec 21, 2009
In 1979, a Hungarian chess fanatic and professor at the University of Budapest, Erno Rubik (1944-), invented a cube puzzle brain-teaser. This game of logic first interested colleagues and mathematicians. Ideal Toys began marketing the puzzle in 1980.
In May 1982, a patent infringement suit was filed by Arthur S. Obermayer. Obermayer claimed that his company, Moleculon, held a 1972 U.S. patent for the identical puzzle, which had been created by Moleculon's chief research scientist, Larry D. Nichols. (A patent is a government document that grants an inventor the sole right to manufacture his or her invention for a certain period of time.) In 1984, the court ruled in favor of Moleculon.
Sources: Giscard d'Estaing, Valerie-Anne. The World Almanac Book of Inventions, p. 132; Harris, Harry. Good Old-Fashioned Yankee Ingenuity, p. 256.
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