NEC itself originally filed the suit in December 1984 to seek a declaration from the US courts that its design of a computer chip did not violate the copyrights of American makers. Intel in February 1985 joined the suit, claiming that the design of NEC did violate its copyrights. The suit concerned whether the microcodes of NEC's V20 and V30 microprocessors were illegal copies of Intel's 8086.
Microcodes are computer instructions embedded in the computer chip.
Computer programs are protected by federal copyright law. The judge did not at that time rule that NEC's microcode was a copy of Intel's, which would be required for Intel to win the case. NEC is claiming that its microcode was developed completely independently from that of Intel. Moreover, it would then be able to use a similar strategy in developing future products. Nevertheless, the ruling by the judge is expected to give semiconductor makers greatly expanded powers in the licensing their chips.