[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by island911

Hardly a lowlife. It sounds like he was a key electrical engineer in bringing us the microprocessor.

a key electrical engineer that never actually made a computer chip, just patented the concept which he was accused of stealing. Later the patent was denied as it turns out this guy wasn't even the original designer. Looks like it was a submarine patent, this guy got wind of work going on in the industry and was the first to obtain a patent on it even though someone else was doing all the work. If he had done that to you or me we'd be plenty pissed off. Nope, this guy doesn't appear to the on the up and up, not a straight shooter.
He made a killing by stealing someone else's patent out from under them, then tried to hide his tax liability by claiming he didn't live in California. Not a good guy at all.

For Texas Instruments, Some Bragging Rights

By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: June 20, 1996

Texas Instruments claimed victory yesterday in a bitter six-year dispute over the invention of the computer on a chip, a crucial component that has fueled the microelectronics era.

The company said the United States Patent Office had recently affirmed that one of its former engineers, Gary W. Boone, was the inventor of the single-chip microcontroller, a device that is now embedded in millions of electronic products.

The Patent Office ruling is the result of a five-year proceeding to determine whether a patent awarded in 1990 to a a Southern California inventor, Gilbert P. Hyatt, took precedence over the Boone-Texas Instruments patent.

Texas Instruments said the Patent Office's decision, which grants the company's request by officially recognizing Mr. Boone and the company as the inventors of the single-chip microcontroller, would not have a financial impact because the patent has expired.

"This is Texas and this is for bragging rights," said Neil McGlone, a spokesman for the company. "What this does is remove any doubt about who the inventor was, and it was T.I."

The decision could, however, have a profound impact on Mr. Hyatt's financial fortunes. The initial announcement of the Hyatt award, made in August 1990, threw the computer industry into turmoil.

As early as 1992 Mr. Hyatt had been successful in licensing the microcontroller design to a number of Japanese and European companies and had received at least $70 million in royalties. A number of legal specialists said that whether Mr. Hyatt would now be able to keep his royalties would depend on the individual terms of his contracts with his licensees.

Mr. Hyatt's lawyer did not return telephone calls yesterday.

Mr. Hyatt's patent is an example of a class of "submarine" patents that may be issued years after competitive commercial development has taken place. Since the Hyatt patent was issued, however, a number of changes have been made in Federal patent law in order to bring the United States patent system into line with international law.

For example, American patents now expire 20 years after they are initially applied for rather than 17 years after the patent has issued. Legislation is also now pending that would force disclosure of all patent applications within 18 months after they are filed.

A microcontroller is like a microprocessor. However, the microcontroller contains its owns software. Microprocessors are programmed externally. Credit for inventing the microprocessor has generally been given to Ted Hoff, who developed the first such chip at the Intel Corporation in 1971. Texas Instruments, however, also built a microprocessor that year. Mr. Boone's computer on a chip included a software program that was stored permanently in read-only memory that was part of the chip. This permitted both a significant cost reduction and increased reliability and convenience so that all-in-one devices could be built into low-cost electronic appliances.

Mr. Boone completed building the first working single-chip microcontroller in the early morning hours of July 4, 1971.

Mr. Hyatt, in contrast never actually built a microcontroller, but instead based his claim to the invention in a series of patent applications in the 1970's and 1980's. While Mr. Hyatt contended that he had first described the idea for a computer on a chip in December 1970, the Patent Office determined that he had first mentioned the invention in an application that was not filed until December 1977, six years after Texas Instruments introduced the product.

As a result of the Patent Office ruling, a notice will be attached to Mr. Hyatt's United States Patent No. 4,942,516 explaining that his claims have been canceled.