The protracted dispute over alleged patent infringements between Hitachi Ltd and Motorola Inc reached a sensational climax last week when Federal Court Judge Lucius Bunton in Austin, Texas ordered Motorola to stop selling its current flagship 68030 microprocessor and Hitachi to stop selling the H8/532 microcontroller. The 68030 is so much more vital to Motorola and to the likes of Apple Computer Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, NeXT Inc and a host of lesser Unix systems companies – than the H8 is to Hitachi that Motorola is seen as having little alternative but to hurry to reach a cross-licensing agreement with Hitachi on whatever terms the Japanese company dictates. The reason that the two companies are in court at all is that Hitachi was an official second-source for the 68000 family up to the 68010 version, but when it brought out the true 32-bit 68020 version, Motorola refused to hand over the masks to any of its second-sources – a decision that also infuriated Thomson SA, the European second-source for the 68000. The effective victory for Hitachi – even though it says it will appeal the decision over the H8 – raises the intriguing possibility that it will name as its price for settling that it gets masks for the 68030 and the forthcoming 68040. The patent at issue is one covering the on-board memory of the chip. The judge also ordered Hitachi to pay $1.9m damages and Motorola to pay $500,000.
