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80-Year-Old Inventor Gil Hyatt Says Patent Office is Waiting For Him To Die (venturebeat.com)
Dean Takahashi, reporting for VentureBeat: Gil Hyatt has gotten many rewards from his days as an inventor. In 1990, he received a fundamental but controversial patent on what he called the first microprocessor, or computer on a chip. It was 22 years late, but he nosed out rivals such as Intel in being the first to file for a patent application in 1968. He then licensed that patent and 22 of his 69 other patents to Philips Electronics, which then began enforcing them on the rest of the electronics industry and collecting royalties.
Philips' efforts netted Hyatt more than $150 million, though the state of California would try for 24 years to take a big chunk of that money for taxes. It argued that Hyatt pretended to move to Las Vegas in 1991, but in 2017, he finally prevailed in convincing the tax board that he really did move. But at 80 years old, Hyatt still isn't resting on the rewards he got. In fact, he's still in a bitter battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die. Hyatt sued to get the patent office to issue his remaining patent applications. The patent office declined to comment, citing the litigation. Further reading: Gil Hyatt interview: Why patent examiners gave controversial patents a scarlet letter.
Philips' efforts netted Hyatt more than $150 million, though the state of California would try for 24 years to take a big chunk of that money for taxes. It argued that Hyatt pretended to move to Las Vegas in 1991, but in 2017, he finally prevailed in convincing the tax board that he really did move. But at 80 years old, Hyatt still isn't resting on the rewards he got. In fact, he's still in a bitter battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die. Hyatt sued to get the patent office to issue his remaining patent applications. The patent office declined to comment, citing the litigation. Further reading: Gil Hyatt interview: Why patent examiners gave controversial patents a scarlet letter.
Why are they calling him an inventor? Just because he got patents that automatically means he is one? It's clear he scammed a broken system (well, it works as it's designed actually, but broken for humanity as a whole in the sense that we all get fucked by it)
It should be use em or lose em.
In 1990, he received a fundamental but controversial patent on what he called the first microprocessor, or computer on a chip. It was 22 years late
First "on a computer" patent troll.
So the first MCU that used an instruction set, but made from individual transistors, was made in 1953. Vacuum tubes that worked as transistors were older yet.
The first integrated circuit that was designed to act as a transistor was built in 1956 and the design for it was a couple years before that.
Gil Hyatt filed in 1968, over a decade before each and every component of his invention was already invented and put together using the same IC structure his patent described.
The reason Fairchild and Intel fought so hard was in essence because *at best* Gil Hyatt invented the second MCU instruction set to ever exist, but fairchilds was the third and Intel was the forth.
If Gil deserves a patent on an existing design that only differs in the instruction set, then neither fairchild or intels also-different instruction set should be covered by the same patent.
If Gil's covers all future instruction sets to ever be invented, then being the second inventor he should lose his patent to Geoffrey Dummer instead.
This guy is a patent troll who's only real "first" was to file the original "an existing thing, on my computer" patent.
What's worse... calling a patent troll, however successful he was, an "inventor"... or that California spent two and half decades trying to extort that patent troll for money.
California Franchise Tax Board (California's version of the IRS) is like that.. My wife and I bought a house in Las Vegas in 1994, and she moved into the house then and went to work for a local hospital. I got a tiny studio apartment near work in San Diego, as I had a job I liked and there was a rumor going around that there were going to be layoffs in the near future and I'd hoped to get laid off vs quiting. The wait for the layoffs wound up being close to 2 years, so I did quite a bit of flying up to Las Vegas over the weekend for that time. The layoffs finally happened in Dec 1995, and I was laid off. I moved my stuff up to Las Vegas and got unemployment. During the nearly two years I was still working in San Diego, I filed state income tax returns showing my California wages but did NOT show wife's Nevada wages. To make a long story short, I had to pay a tax attorney quite a bit AND nearly two years to convince the FTB that Nevada wages were NOT taxable by California, even though I had California wages. The CalFTB can FUCK OFF.. Soooo damn glad we escaped that nuthouse...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Hi Gil! I didn't know you read Slashdot!
He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die.
Me too; and I'm only 50!
this is just a rich guy evading taxes. The "Snowbirds" in Arizona & Florida who live there 6.5 months out of the year do the same damn thing.
As someone who lives in one state and pays every dime of taxes owed with zero deductions (stopped getting those when my kid turned 17.5) screw this noise. Enjoy civilization? Pay your dues like everyone else.
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This patent was issued in 1990 - it expired after 17 years, in 2007. US patents are only good for a limited amount of time, somewhere between 3.5 years and 17 years (depending upon if you want to pay the maintenance fees to keep the patent in force). He's not collecting on the concept of a microprocessor any more.
As far as his other pending patents, it appears the USPTO is playing games with him, as inventors 65 years old or older qualify for expedited examination, and it should take no more than a year for him to either receive his patent or receive a final rejection.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
First patent troll? He can't die soon enough.
Thumbing without editing because auto-correct based on key layout's likely mispresses is patented...
Maybe he'd have died fat and happy by now if hebhadn't been fougbt so hard all along the way.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think it's safe to say that lots of other sensible people are hoping that this 80-Year-Old patent troll dies, the sooner the better. I certainly do.
(No, I'm not defending the patent office.)
Tired of companies inventing something great, then they stop innovating and instead sink all their money into lawyers and sue sue sue. Die Die Die.
Actually, it's when they're dying that they sue, sue, sue.
When a tech company is doing well, their money is better spent innovating and staying ahead of the pack. When they're getting behind, it's still better spent on getting ahead.
During this period patent portflios are mostly used defensively against other company's suits. Find some patents in the portfolio the other guys can be accused of infringing and counter-sue. Then settle for a cross-licensing agreement, and maybe a true-up payment if one side has a bigger pile of relevant patents.
But when they're dying, they're desperate. That's when they go through their portfolio and sue anybody they might be able to make money from.
(Been there, dealt with that: Northern Telecom was on the ropes. They'd been a big player in the design of SONNET and had a lot of patents on it. So they went after anybody with patents that looked like they were doing something SONNET-related that might infringe on one of theirs. So I and my co-architect got to spend a few weeks writing, for our lawyers, a set of analyses of why each of several NT patents didn't cover the stuff in our patents, or other chunks of the chips we'd designed that looked like they just MUST have an infringing component. B-b )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Maybe it's time Gil
I'm deeply opposed to regressive taxation. Meaning taxes that target the working class, especially the working poor. The "Netflix Tax" was a great example of this, as are soda taxes, sales tax and many Vehicle License Taxes. I favor progressive taxation. Meaning the larger benefit a person receives from society the more they pay for it's upkeep and improvement. I'm a Democratic Socialist after all.
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that disproportionately apply to the wealthy. That was implied by context. The wealthy receive the greatest benefit from society and therefor must pay a larger share of it's upkeep. Civilization is like a club you join and pay dues for. Taxes are those dues. If the people who use the club the most don't pay their dues the club goes to ruin.
.com boom and later the housing boom hid the damage.
America had it's best years when the top marginal tax rage (income over $12 million/year adjusted for inflation) was 90%. Things started going downhill when Reagan slashed taxes and restructured corporate taxes to make pump and dump style stock buy backs a thing. Clinton accelerated this trend but the
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If you move out of the U.S. but your last state of residence was California, the CA FTB will try to argue that since you did not move to another state, your "state of residence" is still California even if you don't live in the country anymore. And that you owe California taxes on income you're making in Canada or the UK or wherever. When I began working in Vancouver, Canada, I got lucky and happened to consult with a tax attorney first. He strongly recommended I first rent an apartment in Washington for a few months and get a WA driver's license, and commute cross-border to work. That would establish with no uncertainty that I was a Washington resident. Then I could move to Canada, free of the clutches of the California FTB.
(The U.S. Federal government does this too - demands U.S. income tax on money you earn while living abroad. No getting around it if you're a U.S. citizen, which is why some wealthy people have worked to give up their U.S. citizenship. Most outher countries tax based on residency. If you live in the country, they expect you to pay income tax. If you live outside, they don't tax you. This is especially fun for dual-citizens who hold U.S. citizenship by birth (one of their parents was a U.S. citizen). They may have never set foot in the U.S. their entire lives, but Uncle Sam still demands they pay taxes.)
Stupid. If California is such a "shit hole" why does it have some of the highest property values in the US. For every negative California has I'd wager whatever backwater you live in has two.
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He and the People's Republic of California deserve each other. This story reads like the punchline of a canonical lawyer joke.
You dont know shit.
The USPTO has a shadow classification, "SAWS", for specific people that is basically "never issue this person another patent, ever, for any reason." Not only is this true, its a fact now in court evidence that this classification was placed on him.
The USPTO is just favoring large corporations over the little guy here, because they are scumbags.
"His name was James Damore."