The Rice Fondren office opened a year ago. These developments show that while the mechanisms to protect ideas continue to evolve, the spirit of American invention thrives. Another method is to create cross-licensing agreements under which companies agree to license technology to each other for use in their products. Motorola will license its copper technology in chip manufacturing to AMD for use in microprocessors. In return, AMD will license its flash memory technology to Motorola for use in programming.
Flash memory retains data when power is turned off.
The primary benefit will be the ability to produce powerful processors in certain semiconductor markets. The agreement will allow both companies to get products to market faster, and will give them increased leverage on spending for research and development. Both companies plan to implement the technology in 1999. The 1958 patent, known as the Kilby Patent, is credited with launching the age of electronics. TI officials tried for 29 years to convince the Japanese patent office to recognize the Kilby Patent and thought they finally had succeeded.