have a nice weekend

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Jim Turley, editor of Silicon-Insider and previous editor of Microprocessor Report and a member of the company's Scientific Advisory Board, said,

"After analyzing PTSC's patent, I'm certainly impressed with its range of coverage, basically representing the dominant means of accelerating internal microprocessor clock speeds." -- "The claims primarily revolve around a patent titled "High Performance Microprocessor Having Variable Speed System Clock," no. 5,809,336 in the US Patent and Trademark Office. In microprocessors, time is kept by a vibrating crystal. In the early days of the business, processors operated at the same pace of the vibrating crystal. Microprocessors, however, started to move much faster than the crystal, requiring an internal mechanism to keep the two synchronized. Around six months ago, Patriot's executives determined that they had a claim against PC makers using Pentium chips" Turley said. He did not comment on the merits of the suit but said "it looks like [the original inventors] were onto something clever."

The patent application was filed in June 1995, and itself grew out of a patent application from August 1989. The US patent office granted the patent in September 1998. "They've discovered in their vault that they have what appear to be some pretty defensible patents in the way chips are made," - "From my point of view, they appear to have a solid case. But how these things play out in the end is anybody's guess." IMO - I can take a "solid" guess.