🚀 go-pugleaf

The West magazine section of the San Jose Mercury News (Sunday,
2-Dec-90) had an article on Hyatt and his microprocessor patent.  The
article made the patent sound rather poorly founded, the main point
being that after nearly 20 years of rewriting the new patent bore
little resemblence to the original application in which the computer-
on-a-chip concept was a minor portion.

There weren't many technology details, but apparently Hyatt's concept
was not feasible using the technology of the day.  The patent was
originally denied for this reason.  The patent was only granted
because Hyatt claimed that it could have been implemented as a serial
architecture rather than as a parallel one like the microprocessors we
all know and love.  If this is true, it could substantially limit the
range of the patent.  But no one knows for sure.

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics			Durand 012
Stanford University				FAX: (415) 725-3377
(jim@KAOS.stanford.edu) 			Work: (415) 723-9127