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Patents United States Technology

80-Year-Old Inventor Gil Hyatt Says Patent Office is Waiting For Him To Die (venturebeat.com) 108

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
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.
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80-Year-Old Inventor Gil Hyatt Says Patent Office is Waiting For Him To Die More

80-Year-Old Inventor Gil Hyatt Says Patent Office is Waiting For Him To Die

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  • why are they calling him that? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31, 2018 @03:38PM (#57233368)

    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)

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's for legal reasons. Turns out that "Patent Troll" is a Trademark of "International Patent Troll Consortium".

    • What's scary is that all of this already happened over 100 years ago [forbes.com]. And nothing was done to fix the system. A patent troll crippled the fledgling auto industry for decades, before Ford finally won a ruling on a technicality that exempted it from the Seldon patent (its car engines used a different combustion cycle than the one described in the Seldon patent).
      • Patent sugestions: updating your patent application should not reset the clock on patent duration. For a machine patent you should need to submit a working prototype. Anyone sued for patent infringement should be able to challenge the validity and scope of the patent. Your patent application should require sufficient detail to allow building it. For software patents you should need to submit source code and essential details on compiling it. Copyright should only cover artwork and books, not software.

  • Reads more like an early patent troll? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @03:38PM (#57233370) Homepage
    It should be use em or lose em.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hwihyw ( 4763935 )

      Fine, apply it equally. Book manuscript, publish it or lose it. Movie script, make it into a movie or lose it. Logo design, use it or lose it. Painting, sell it or lose it. Book manuscript, turn it into a movie or lose movie rights. Photography, sell it or lose commercial rights.

      • You're confusing patents with copyright.

        That's not so say copyright is not insanely broken, but we are discussing patents, which (correct me if I'm wrong) currently stand at a reasonable 20 years, and actually do benefit both the creator, as well as society as a whole. It's one of the few ways left for a smart person to break into big money by being smart, solving problems, and working the system.

        • AFAIK, patents on chemical and pharmaceutical do bring a net benefit to society, but other patents don't.

          Bessen, James & Meurer, Michael J. (2008) Patent Failure [princeton.edu]. Princeton University Press.

          • I have to respectfully disagree. The patent itself is the motivator to invent better and novel ways of doing things. Without the patent, we would likely not have a great many awesome things we have today. The short(er) time-frame of a patent allows the market to change things after the creator has had his day.

            What bothers me is the way that tech giants go about applying for them. I'm no expert,and this is purely observation from the outside, but it really seems like the giants apply for patents on every lit

            • I have to respectfully disagree. The patent itself is the motivator to invent better and novel ways of doing things. Without the patent, we would likely not have a great many awesome things we have today. The short(er) time-frame of a patent allows the market to change things after the creator has had his day.

              Patents are a motivator for invention, but not the biggest one in most industries (Lopez, 2009, p. 21). (This is a meta-analysis. If I remember right, I found this paper to be an amusing read, becaus

      • If you write an unpublished book, and I happen to write the same book, or a very close one, by some cosmic improbability, it's actually perfectly fine.

  • Controversy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31, 2018 @03:39PM (#57233376)

    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.

    • Re:Controversy (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xnet Project ( 4343155 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @04:05PM (#57233552)

      Here is another interesting side note from a court case:

      https://www.boe.ca.gov/meeting... [ca.gov]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )

        Just geezing here...

        I moved to California in early 1991 from a state with no income tax (on earned income). I filed my federal taxes for tax year 1990 in April of 1991, using my California address as my current address. The California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) "made a determination" that I had been a California resident for the tax year 1990 on the basis of the address I used when I filed my federal taxes for tax year 1990. I protested that I had not been a California resident in 1990, and that they did

        • I (foolishly perhaps) insisted that I didn't need to prove I wasn't a resident...

          Innocent until proven guilty!!! Oh wait, this is not a criminal matter (at least not yet!). You (and your employer, investment broker, etc) provide documentation so the FTB can verify you paid the correct amount of taxes. Lots of people fraudulently claim residence where they don't actually live in order to avoid paying taxes. People in the FTB may or may not be jerks, but are they supposed to just let everyone claim anything they want without documentation and then pay whatever taxes they choose? For

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          In particular, CA tried to tax retirement income of those who moved to Nevada.

          Our response, given that we have to give full faith and credit to sister-state judgments, was to make all property in the state exempt for judgments for income tax on retirement income . . .

          hawk

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      Surely it should be to Tom Kilburn or F.C. (Freddie) Williams, as the Manchester SSEM had the first true instruction set.

    • 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.

      Your words sound plausible yet your typo unconsciously triggers me to reread and check the dictionary.

  • Not sure which is worse... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bblb ( 5508872 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @03:44PM (#57233412)
    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.

    • It would be curious to see if there is an heir to said patents regardless of original creation or "patent-obtained" technologies going forward. In the end a last Will and Testament could throw a wrench into the proverbial wait for the patents to shift ownership in their entirety.

  • California FTB is like that... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LVSlushdat ( 854194 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @04:05PM (#57233556)

    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...

    • Re:California FTB is like that... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @04:53PM (#57233828) Homepage Journal

      Michigan taxed me for wages I made in California, even though I moved out of the wolverine state two years prior. This happens a lot and has little to do with the pulsing horror that is California's bureaucracy and more to do with how individuals files their taxes. You really have to dot your "i"'s and cross your "t"'s to keep the tax man off your back.

      It's a very common trick for people in Bay Area to retire to Reno-Tahoe and cash out their stock to avoid a lot of taxes. The Franchise Tax Board is wise to this one and sometimes will try their best to extract everything they can before they leave. People make think that their money is theirs, but they earned it in California and probably owe taxes on it. That they can leave without paying taxes is more of a loop hole than a right, and you can expect many states to not be very nice about it.

      I'd much rather it were explicitly dealt with in federal regulations so that we can deal with it fairly, like a 50/50 split between old and new state. Rather than states like California chasing people for decades on seemingly minor issues as sort of an intimidation policy against tax cheats (the FTB secretly views you as a tax cheat)

    • 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

  • Me Too! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @04:14PM (#57233616)

    He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die.

    Me too; and I'm only 50!

  • They're not waiting for him to die (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @04:49PM (#57233806)
    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.

  • 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 f

  • First patent troll? He can't die soon enough.

  • 80-Year-Old Inventor Gil Hyatt Says Patent Office is Waiting For Him To Die

    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.)

  • Maybe? (Score:3)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @05:44PM (#57234114)
    Maybe it's time Gil

  • He and the People's Republic of California deserve each other. This story reads like the punchline of a canonical lawyer joke.

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