La Palma Man Says He’s Won Chip Patent

After battling for nearly 20 years for the recognition he believed due him, a La Palma engineer said late Tuesday he has been awarded a U.S. patent for his 1968 invention of the computer on a chip.

The startling announcement is sure to have broad ramifications throughout the worldwide semiconductor industry, analysts said, because virtually every chip manufacturer today makes products potentially covered by the patent quietly issued last month by the U.S. Patent Office.

However, analysts cautioned that if Gilbert Hyatt, a 52-year-old self-employed consulting engineer, attempts to strictly enforce the patent with claims for large royalty payments, he probably will face the well-funded legal apparatus of every semiconductor maker in the world.

Products containing chips apparently covered by the new patent range from electronic dishwashers to automobiles to telephones.

“These devices are in virtually every piece of electronic gear on the planet,” said Michael Slater, editor of a microprocessor newsletter in the San Francisco area. “There are literally millions of them around.”

Slater said the patent covers what is known in the industry as “microcontrollers” or “single chip microcomputers,” devices that contain electronic brains as well as electronic memory systems. The devices, Slater noted, are not the same as microprocessors, which power personal computers and for which other patents have already been issued to scientists at Intel and Texas Instruments.

Hyatt, a soft-spoken engineer who had sought the patent since 1970 for an electronic machine tool controller he built in 1968, said Tuesday night that he is not interested in large royalty payments from semiconductor companies. “I’m not an enforcer, I’m a research engineer,” Hyatt said.

Nevertheless, Hyatt said that he intends to pursue licensing agreements with companies that he believes are using his invention and that he is already in such discussions with one semiconductor company he declined to name.

Hyatt said he pursued the patent for 20 years despite two rejections from the patent office. He said he kept refiling the patent application because he believed that he had made an important contribution that needed to be recognized.

Hyatt, who is working on advanced technology projects in his La Palma laboratory, said he has no illusions about getting rich from the patent. “I would just like to fund my research work,” he said.