Texas Instruments Inc is not at all happy that Gilbert Hyatt has been awarded a fundamental patent on the microcontroller, and has revealed that the US Patent & Trademark Office has begun a proceeding to determine whether the patent covers an invention made first by Gary Boone while working at Texas: the company says it already holds several patents covering the commercial implementation of the the single-chip microcomputer, based on work done by Mr Boone and other employees of Texas which led to the TMS100 and TMS1000 microcontrollers; Boone has a patent application pending in the Patent Office that derives from his filing in 1971; the Patent Office says that Mr Hyatt’s claims were accorded a patent application filing date of December 14, 1977, and not 1970.
