The issue concerns the so-called Moore Microprocessor Patents (MMP), named for Charles Moore, the inventor of the Forth programming language. A good example of an affected technology involves clocks, the drumbeaters that keep all a circuit's soldiers marching in step. In the old days, microprocessors ran off the same clock signal as the rest of the computer, and that was no problem at speeds below around 120 MHz. The trouble is that the computer's clock signal has to follow many centimeters of copper wiring all over the computer, leading to delays. Charles Moore and Russell Fish dreamed up the solution of letting the processor clock run as fast as you want while synchronizing it to the computer's much slower clock, enabling speeds in the gigahertz range. And that's the way things have worked for the past decade or so.

How a seeming pipsqueak like Patriot wound up with the keys to the microprocessor kingdom is a complicated tale, but here goes.

Fish and Moore came up with their technology while developing the SH-Boom microprocessor in the late 1980s. Sometime before the patents issued, Fish transferred his interest in SH-Boom to a family trust, which sold it to a company called Nanotronics, which sold it to Patriot in 1995. Patriot apparently didn't realize the value of the patents until the early 2000s, a time of stock taking for many holders of intellectual property. (Remember when British Telecom briefly thought it owned hypertext linking?)

Patriot saw it had been leaving money on the table and embarked on its Christmas quest for cash, but it quickly got stuck (unless all owners of a patent sue, a court case will get nowhere), and Moore wouldn't go along with Patriot's plan. His Silicon Valley licensing firm, Technology Properties, Ltd. (TPL), began a legal battle for full ownership, and Patriot's dreams of riches seemed to recede.

But the big technology companies apparently feared infringing on the patents and rushed to cut a deal no matter what the legal niceties. At one point, AMD took a $1.7-million license from Patriot, and Intel took a license from Moore. (AMD put both oars in, paying additional cash for Patriot's original product, the processor that succeeded Moore and Fish's SH-boom processor.)

The promise of vast sums of money can make even bitter rivals kiss and make up; and in 2005, TPL, Moore, and Patriot set aside their suits and formed Phoenix Digital, a 50-50 joint venture for licensing the patents.

Patriot and its shareholders are enjoying their first profitable year ever, and Moore has moved on to found a fabless multicore processor firm, Intelasys. But the tale of the patents may not be over. Russell Fish and his family trust sued Patriot seeking a piece of the action. The Fish family and Patriot have been in mediation since 11 September. Stay tuned.

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/tech_talk/2007/03/davids_do_beat_goliaths_someti.html

Be well