ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University officials announced today (Jan. 4) that the university and the Cornell Research Foundation have filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, asserting that the Hewlett-Packard Company infringed, and continues to infringe, a patent issued in 1989 basically to protect a computer instruction processing technique created by Professor Emeritus H.C. Torng of Cornell's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The invention protected by the patent (U.S. patent No. 4,807,115) substantially accelerates a computer's processing speed. More specifically, the patent involves a technique for computer processors with multiple functional units that permits multiple instructions to be issued per machine cycle and out of program order, thereby substantially increasing the efficiency and speed of the processors.

Cornell's suit, filed Dec. 27, 2001, alleges that Hewlett-Packard has infringed on the patent since 1995. James J. Mingle, university counsel and secretary of the corporation, indicated that based on information presently available to the university, the patent infringement could lead to a request for damages in excess of $100 million and that the university will vigorously pursue the litigation. He said Cornell's numerous efforts to address the infringement have been repeatedly rebuffed by Hewlett-Packard.

Cornell President Hunter Rawlings commented on the initiation of the lawsuit: "The intellectual property of the university and of the members of its faculty are among our most important assets. They must be protected, and the university is firmly committed to pursuing all appropriate means to protect its patent in this case."

Cornell Vice Provost for Research Robert C. Richardson, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in physics, added that it would be unacceptable for the university to allow the patent infringement to continue: "Professor Torng devoted much of his professional life to developing this highly innovative approach to high-speed processing. We cannot stand by while Hewlett-Packard profits from Professor Torng's contributions in this field in violation of Cornell's patent."Torng has been widely recognized for his contributions to computer chip architecture. In 1997 he was cited by officials of Intel Corp. "for his contributions to the state-of-the-art high-speed instruction decoding and execution." He also was named the first Intel Academic Research Fellow.

Prior to his retirement from Cornell, Professor Torng (pronounced "Torn") taught both introductory and advanced courses in computers and computer networks, received many awards for excellence in teaching and trained many of today's leaders in the computer industry.

Representing Cornell in the legal proceedings are the Office of University Counsel, led by Mingle, and patent counsel from the Los Angeles and New York City offices of the firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood.

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