Secret life of a legendary inventor.

Secret life of a legendary inventor

Don't you hate getting hung out to dry?

Remember Eli Whitney. Others stole and copy-catted his cotton gin's operating principle. Powerful interests fought him over royalties. Although granted a patent in 1794, he earned only small change on his epic invention.

Gilbert Hyatt will tell you things haven't changed.

"I've got some real big guys breathing down my neck," said the Los Angeles-area inventor, who woved high-techdom by winning a patent in July for the microprocessor - the computer on a chip that's probably inside your watch, in your VCR and maybe in your pacemaker.

So who are the "guys" that would intimidate a 52-year-old, self-employed engineer who drives a grimy 1977 Toyota? Are they toughies from Intel Corp. and others in the estimated $4 billion-a-year computer chip manufacturing industry who don't want to write Hyatt royalty checks for the next 17 years of his patent's lifespan?

No answer. The demure, brown-bearded, hazel-eyed computer scientist won't name names. He's hyper-sensitive to his vulnerability.

Concerned about theft, his office and lab location is secret.

"I don't let anyone know where I work," says Hyatt with a sublime smile.

The first name of his girlfriend - that's a secret, too. Why? There's a very good reason, but that's a secret too.

Good idea, keeping one's guard up.

Especially after countless 90-hour work weeks, pioneering a host of electronic devices and securing about 50 other patents. Why give the big "guys" ammo after sacrificing so much from your personal life?

"That's why I'm not a husband," says Hyatt, who divorced his wife amid his 20-year quest for the microprocessor patent. (He quickly adds that his compulsive work week wasn't the only reason for the split.)

The sacrifices are plenty. The one-time UC Berkeley sailing team captain has long had scarce time for his college loves, sailing and flying and tennis.

"It's a lot of hard work - to go it alone," professes Hyatt, relaxing at home on a couch beneath collections that cover one wall: deer and ram horns, old bottles, samurai swords, sea shells, a stuffed marlin and Asian ceramics. The armchair collector, not a world traveler, culled locally for these.

Leaning over his gold-painted coffee table, where cookies are set out for a visitor, he'll let conversation stray from his work only if prodded.

"I haven't seen a movie in five years," he admits, eyes sparkling, expecting his guest to flinch. A circuit board rests against the table leg, a prototype memory architecture innovation that earned him a patent Sept. 4 this year. Understandably, Hyatt pours over patent news in the government's "Official Gazette."

"I don't read for pleasure," he adds.

But the payoff may be around the corner for the bachelor whose green shag carpet in his modest La Palma home has a few apple-sized holes.

"He might have a gold mine," said high-tech attorney Susan Nycum of Baker & MacKenzie in Palo Alto. "But the size will depend on how he plays it out."

With a standard non-exclusive licensing fee of 3 percent of the value of computer products sold last year alone, Hyatt could have earned $210 million, Time magazine estimated.

Time, Business Week, The New York Times, Washington Post, Paris-Match and publications in Italy and Japan this fall blasted the news of this "obscure" engineer worldwide and into high-tech legend.

Hyatt, however, has long been an outsider to Silicon Valley and to mainsteam finance. He says they stifle inventiveness and rip off ideas when they can.

He'll tell you his Northridge company, Micro Computer Inc., was shut down by "its investors" who disputed the tight control he held over his "intellectual property."

But Hyatt won't tell you Gordon E. Moore and Robert N. Noyce snatched his idea to put computer brains on a silicon chip. Along with a couple of investment houses and other individuals, Moore and Noyce sunk money into Hyatt's Northridge-based Micro Computer Inc. in the late 1960s as they were founding Intel. Hyatt's company died and Intel's Ted Hoff developed the first microprocessor, and a cascade of manufacturing followed.

Then in 1973 Texas Instruments engineer Gary Boone won the first patent for a microprocessor.

"You see, these are all derivations of my work," claims Hyatt, who points to his earlier original filing, December 1970, for what eventually was dubbed the "Single Chip Integrated Circuit Computer Architecture." The patent was granted July 17 this year.

"The investors put me out of business, funneled it out to the marketplace and I ended up watching them play the game from the outside."

"But I just can't go around pointing fingers (at) multibillion-dollar companies."

Instead, he negotiates quietly.

"We are talking all kinds of arrangements . . . with a dozen to two dozen companies," said his personal attorney, Gregory L. Roth. Not only orthodox licensing deals, but a joint venture to set up a company just to enforce Hyatt's patents, said Roth. He has represented Hyatt for two decades but won't say how much, if at all, he has charged Hyatt, an on-again off-again aerospace consultant who reportedly scrapes for his mortgage payment on occasion.

Hyatt's publicity man is working on spec. "I'm deferring all my billing until he gets some kind of royalty package," said publicist Charles McHenry of Central Point, Ore. He figures spending $6,000 on Hyatt over six weeks was a "ridiculously cheap" investment in his career, as well as the inventor's.

"The story, as you know, has got legs," says McHenry, estimating a reading audience of 120 million.

Nevertheless, it took more than notoriety to bring companies to Hyatt's doorstep, on a palm tree-studded cul-de-sac in the modest Southland city of La Palma.

A number of patent attorneys and business people are curious. The patent office has reportedly received 30 written requests for photocopies of Hyatt's full microprocessor file. Lawyers generally guard their opinions. Palo Alto patent attorney Roger Borovoy has reviewed the patent but won't comment on its merit. He represents companies that might be affected. "Maybe everyone will take licenses without Hyatt suing. It depends on what he charges. At a penny a chip, everybody might sign up," said Borovoy, who in the 1960s successfully defended Robert Noyce's patent for a crucial metallization technique used to create integrated circuits.

"If you assume the patent is valid and enforceable (which ultimately is up to courts to decide) it would affect not only chip and computer manufacturers, but other industries whose products are built around those chips, such as automotive and appliances." said attorney Nycum.

Hyatt also has some flat-out detractors.

"He's a very difficult person, and he was 20 years ago," said Stuart Lubitz, a Los Angeles patent attorney who represented Hyatt's Micro Computer Inc. and clashed with Hyatt until it shut down in 1971. "He's stubborn and has a disproportionate valuation of what an inventor's contribution is worth. If he's prepared to license for a five-figure sum, he may find people willing to pay for not having to deal with him," said Lubitz, referring to so-called nuisance licenses that cost corporations far less than litigation.

Securities firm Goldman, Sachs & Co. estimated Intel alone would have to pay $15 million to $45 million if it is not able to pass on the royalty costs. This, however, was Goldman's "worst-case scenario."

If any scenario is likely, it's that Gil Hyatt has the best shot at High-Tech's Folk Hero of the Decade. For only about five of the last 20 years he has worked for others, and strictly as an independent contractor. He'll rail against big companies: "They tend to stifle, suppress and steal from inventors." He puts down "big empires that allude to doing advanced R&D."

A joint venture with Mattel Inc. crumbled when Hyatt couldn't get along with the toymakers. "They came to the conclusion that it would be easier to destroy me than continue with the joint venture."

Finally, he was born with no family fortune or Robert Redford panache. The son of a civil engineer who designed New York City subways says he will plow any royalty windfall into more research. "He said he would buy a new backpack," said attorney Roth who, like his client, is careful not to project a revengeful or greedy man, eager to become a playboy.

"Gil has galvanized a whole army of midnight engineers who are dusting off their projects," said his advance man, McHenry.

Gil's advice to them:

"First: The patent system works, so take advantage of it.

"Second: Industry uses whatever ideas it can glean, so be very careful of your confidential information.

"Third: Make good notes and file disclosure documents with the patent office. It's easy, cheap and very important.

"Fourth: Be careful what you tell the financial community."

PHOTO : His place of the action: Gilbert Hyatt toils over his invention