Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.