Word: microprocessor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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TIME's Money Angles columnist offers survival guidelines for a time of economic turmoil. -- Who invented the microprocessor? Gilbert Hyatt...
...virtual unknown. But Hyatt, 52, has suddenly carved a memorable niche for himself in the multibillion-dollar semiconductor industry. Last week, after a 20-year battle with the patent office, the tenacious engineer announced that he had finally received a certificate of intellectual ownership for a single-chip microprocessor that he says he invented in 1968. The announcement sent shock waves throughout the computer industry, which could be forced to pay Hyatt millions of dollars in royalties...
Most business texts credit engineer Ted Hoff at Intel Corp., based in Santa Clara, Calif., with having fathered the microprocessor between 1969 and 1971. But Hyatt asserts that he put together the requisite technology a year earlier at his short-lived company, Micro Computer Inc., whose major investors included Intel's founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. Micro Computer invented a digital computer that controlled machine tools, then fell apart in 1971 after a dispute between Hyatt and his venture-capital partners over sharing his rights to that invention. Noyce and Moore went on to develop Intel into...
Hoff still believes that his Intel group legitimately beat Hyatt to the punch. Yet some patent lawyers say Hyatt's new patent appears to apply to all microprocessor chips and the millions of personal computers and other products (from pocket calculators to videocassette recorders) that depend on them. Industry executives by and large are keeping mum, but if Hyatt's patent is broadly interpreted by courts, it could make him super-rich. According to analysts, a standard nonexclusive licensing fee of 3% of the value of computer products sold would translate into a $210 million payment just for last year...
...battles anyway. One argument likely to be used against Hyatt is that he never translated his invention into working products. Another line of attack is the principle in patent law of "prior art." This holds that a patent could be invalidated if someone proves that he previously invented a microprocessor identical to Hyatt's, even though it was not patented...