Gilbert P. Hyatt, the Las Vegas-based inventor, who turns 76 in March, filed a lawsuit in January demanding action on what may be the oldest pending U.S. patent applications. 
 
 Gilbert P. Hyatt, the Las Vegas-based inventor, who turns 76 in March, filed a lawsuit in January demanding action on what may be the oldest pending U.S. patent applications. Close 
 
 Forty-three years is too long even for Gilbert P. Hyatt, the dogged inventor who once shocked the computer industry and got rich. 
 
 Hyatt said he’s been waiting that long for a U.S. ruling on whether his electronic signal to control machinery should be granted a patent. The patent-approval process takes 28.3 months on average. His idea for liquid crystal displays? That’s been sitting in the Patent and Trademark Office for 35 years. 
 
 The Las Vegas-based inventor, who turns 76 in March, filed a lawsuit in January demanding action on what may be the oldest pending U.S. patent applications. Hyatt attributes some of the delay to retribution for sometimes making the agency look bad during years of disputes. 
 
 “It’s totally unconscionable,” said Brad Wright, a patent lawyer with Banner & Witcoff in Washington who specializes in computer-related applications and isn’t involved in Hyatt’s case. “The patent office doesn’t want to be embarrassed that they might issue a broad patent that would have a sweeping impact on the technology sector. Rather than be embarrassed, they’re just bottling it up.” 
 
 No one is able to put a price tag on what licensing those two patents would cost technology companies. Even Hyatt said he’s not sure whether he would replicate the shock of getting a patent in 1990 on a “single chip integrated circuit computer architecture,” a ruling that effectively gave him a financial claim to most microprocessors, the digital backbone of every personal computer in the world. 
 
 Industry Firestorm 
 
 What is certain is that Hyatt isn’t some gadfly in a garden shed. He’s probably made more than $150 million from a deal with Royal Philips NV (PHIA), the Dutch electronics maker, to license 23 of his patents, including the 1990 one. Intel Corp. (INTC) co-founder Robert Noyce invested in Hyatt’s first company in the 1960s, according to Hyatt. 
 
 “These were fundamental technologies and even though the industry has grown tremendously, they are based on those fundamental technologies,” Hyatt, who still works in his private lab each day, said in a telephone interview. “I suspect that my ideas are still novel, even to this day.” 
 
 The patent office, which issued 302,948 patents last year and receives more than 500,000 new requests annually, won’t say what’s in Hyatt’s two pending applications. 
 
 Because the filings are so old, they fall under a law that keeps them confidential, said Patrick Ross, a PTO spokesman. That means the office can’t discuss them or even say how many pending patent applications predate a 1995 change in the law, Ross said. 
 
 All Hyatt would say is that he is fighting to get acknowledgment for his work on what he calls “square wave machine control.” 
 
 Texas Instruments 
 
 It took Hyatt 20 years to get his 1990 microprocessor patent. He filed the application around the same period as the two still pending. 
 
 Reaction at the time was swift. Texas Instruments, the world’s largest analog-chip maker, argued to the patent office that Hyatt was claiming credit for one of the company’s inventions. After five years, the agency canceled part of the patent while allowing other aspects of it to remain. 
 
 Still, the patent became part of Hyatt’s licensing deal with Philips, which has generated more than $350 million. Philips deducted its costs and then split the proceeds 50-50, meaning Hyatt probably got more than $150 million. 
 
 $388 Million 
 
 Hyatt, who speaks softly in conversations, doesn’t hesitate to fight. When California, where he once lived, claimed he owed $51 million in back taxes and penalties, he shot back with a lawsuit accusing state officials of harassing him and invasion of privacy. He won a record $388 million award that’s currently being reviewed by Nevada’s Supreme Court. 
 
 He has taken the patent office to court more than 10 times to force the agency to reconsider rejections of some of his applications. He even won a case at the Supreme Court in 2012 over what type of evidence can be presented in district court. 
 
 “I got a whole bunch of cases referred back to the patent office telling them to do it right,” said Hyatt. “I don’t think they want to let it get to the board of appeals and therefore they keep running me around from examination to appeal, reopening prosecutions, examining, forcing me to appeal again and round and round.” 
 
 In the January lawsuit, Hyatt alleges he was told by a PTO unit director that the agency’s unofficial policy in dealing with him is to give him the runaround to avoid making a decision he could appeal. He said that may be why the patent office hasn’t granted him a patent since 1997. 
 
 Ross, the PTO spokesman, wouldn’t comment on the lawsuit, which was filed Jan. 3 in a U.S. district court in Las Vegas. 
 
 Intel Connection 
 
 Hyatt, the son of a Russian emigrant and civil engineer, spent the early part of his career working for aerospace companies. He said he got his ideas for a business while at Teledyne Technologies Inc. (TDY) in the 1960s. 
 
 He set up Micro Computer Inc. in 1968 to implement his ideas, with Noyce, who would co-found Intel that same year, as one of his investors. 
 
 “Dr. Noyce invested in my company personally because, from his standpoint, he thought it had merit,” Hyatt said. “I was happy to get him because I thought Intel would build the chips.” 
 
 Noyce, who died in 1990, often invested in Silicon Valley startups, said Thomas Misa, director of the Charles Babbage Institute Center for the History of Information Technology in Minneapolis, who likened it to someone backing a neighbor’s ideas. Investing with Hyatt would have been consistent with his interests, he said. 
 
 “Bob Noyce was investor in everything,” Misa said. “When he died, his family found a shoe box of promissory notes. He was very keen on building the electronics industry.” 
 
 ‘Frugal Inventor’ 
 
 Leslie Berlin, Noyce’s biographer, and technology historian Ross Bassett, a professor at North Carolina State University in the city of Raleigh, said they couldn’t find records showing Noyce invested with Hyatt, while agreeing with Misa’s comments. 
 
 Hyatt, who describes himself as “at heart a frugal inventor,” said it’s clear he will never be placed in Silicon Valley’s pantheon of founding fathers, even with his 1990 patent. He just wants a decision -- either give him a patent, he said, or a final rejection that he can appeal to a U.S. court. 
 
 While some of Hyatt’s patents predate or are contemporary with those granted to executives at Intel and Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), those companies made products that changed the world, Bassett said. 
 
 “I respect Gilbert Hyatt’s work -- the process of engineering is difficult,” Bassett said in a telephone interview. “But innovations are more than ideas. The broader context matters. If Gilbert Hyatt had never existed, I believe the microprocessor would have developed in the same way that it did.” 
 
 To contact the reporters on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net; Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at bkohn2@bloomberg.net; Pui-Wing Tam at ptam13@bloomberg.net ||||| Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 Doug Engelbart, who has died aged 88, never really made any money from inventing the mouse. Here are 10 others who didn't get to be billionaires. 
 
 1. LEDs 
 
 When Nick Holonyak Jr invented the first practically useful LED in 1962 he predicted it would one day replace Edison's lightbulb. Holonyak's colleagues have said he should be given the Nobel Prize but he humbly says: "It's ridiculous to think that somebody owes you something. We're lucky to be alive, when it comes down to it." 
 
 2. Post-It Notes 
 
 3M sell billions of Post-It Notes each year but its inventors describe themselves as "comfortably off" not wealthy. They were the co-creation of Dr Spencer Silver, who in 1968 developed an adhesive that had a "removability characteristic", and his colleague Art Fry hit on the idea of a bookmark that would stay in place in his hymnbook. 
 
 3. AK-47 
 
 The Kalashnikov rifle, or AK-47, was invented by Soviet Army soldier Mikhail Kalashnikov while recovering in hospital from injuries sustained in World War II. Kalashnikov claimed his creation was for the benefit of his country. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 4. Sapphire stylus 
 
 Marie Killick invented a sapphire stylus for a record player but could not license it and despite years of litigation never made any money. In 1958 she won a lawsuit against Pye but went bankrupt the following year. 
 
 5. Hovercraft 
 
 Sir Christopher Cockerell used a vacuum cleaner and tin cans to test his theories as he developed the hovercraft, which first crossed between Calais and Dover in 1959. Cockerell was knighted but fought for years to get a lump sum from the National Research Development Corporation. 
 
 Image copyright PA 
 
 6. Tetris 
 
 Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov's game Tetris was developed alongside colleagues at a Russian government-funded research centre in 1985. He only started getting royalties 10 years later when he formed The Tetris Company. 
 
 7. The Wind-Up Radio 
 
 Inventor Trevor Baylis recently said he can no longer afford to live in his home in Twickenham, London, because despite millions of sales around the globe, the company he went into business with were able to tweak his design and he lost control over the product and profits. 
 
 "Most of us don't do it for the money but for the buzz," says Baylis. "I know that at least I've left my mark with the radio, the wind-up torch and other things I've invented." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 8. Karaoke machines 
 
 Japanese businessman Daisuke Inoue made money from playing drums in a backing band which let bar goers take the mic and have a go at singing. One time when he couldn't make a gig he put the backing music on tape instead and later made 11 Karaoke (empty orchestra) machines which he leased out. He didn't patent his invention and barely made a yen. 
 
 9. MP3 
 
 The MP3 quickly became the standard for transferring music over the internet. German PhD student Karlheinz Brandenburg started work on the project in the 1980s but because there was no money to distribute the software it was marketed as shareware. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sir Tim Berners-Lee earned billions, but only in kudos 
 
 10. World Wide Web 
 
 And finally, no-one would have stumbled across this list save for Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the web to help scientists working at the European research lab at Cern. He says the secret of the rapid success of his invention was the fact he made it freely available. 
 
 Not all inventors are driven to make money but some want to make a contribution to the "common good", says Dr Tilly Blyth, Keeper of Engineering and Technology at the Science Museum. 
 
 "We tend to focus on the commercial development but in fact its often public and government research that has got it to that stage," Dr Blyth says. "If you look at the iPhone you think it's a great invention from Steve Jobs and Apple but look at the vital components like the screen, the chip and the processor and their origins were all in government-funded research." 
 
 "A lot of the real cutting-edge research comes from the pure and blue sky thinking done in public research facilities for the good of humanity rather than to make money."
– It's been 43 years since Gilbert Hyatt applied for a patent on a machinery-control system, and 35 years since he sought a patent related to liquid crystal displays. It takes an average of about two years to get patent approval—but Hyatt hasn't received it on either invention, Bloomberg reports, meaning his could be the oldest pending applications in existence. The 76-year-old inventor filed a lawsuit in January to push for official action. The problem, according to an outside patent lawyer: The patent office fears embarrassment. Officials worry they "might issue a broad patent that would have a sweeping impact on the technology sector. Rather than be embarrassed, they’re just bottling it up." It's unclear how much such patents could cost technology companies. A previous patent Hyatt received—which took a mere 20 years to be granted—shocked the tech industry by initially offering him a claim on most microprocessors. The patent was later partially revoked, but Hyatt still made a likely $150 million after a deal with Dutch firm Royal Philips NV to license that and other patents, Bloomberg notes. Now he says he's getting the "runaround" from the patent office. At the Huffington Post, an economist puts him among "the fathers of the microcomputer" and calls him a prime example of the challenges faced by independent inventors. But a tech historian notes that "innovations are more than ideas ... If Gilbert Hyatt had never existed, I believe the microprocessor would have developed in the same way that it did."