<Dt> Japan v. Texas Instruments </Dt> <Dd> In 1963, despite the negative experience with NEC and Sony, Texas Instruments tried to establish their production in Japan . For two years MITI did not give a definite answer to the request, and in 1965 Texas Instruments retaliated by threatening with embargo on the import of electronic equipment that infringed their patents . This action hit Sony in 1966 and Sharp in 1967, prompting MITI to secretly look for a Japanese partner to Texas Instruments . MITI blocked the negotiations between Texas Instruments and Mitsubishi (the owner of Sharp), and persuaded Akio Morita to make a deal with Texas Instruments "for the future of Japanese industry". Despite the secret protocols that guaranteed the Americans a share in Sony the agreement of 1967--1968 was extremely disadvantageous for Texas Instruments . For almost thirty years, Japanese companies were producing ICs without paying royalties to Texas Instruments, and only in 1989 the Japanese court acknowledged the patent rights to the invention by Kilby . As a result, in the 1990s, all of Japanese IC manufacturers had to pay for the 30 years old patent or enter into cross-licensing agreements . In 1993, Texas Instruments earned US $520 million in license fees, mostly from Japanese companies . </Dd> <P> During the patent wars of the 1960s the press and professional community in the United States recognized that the number of the IC inventors could be rather large . The book "Golden Age of Entrepreneurship" named four people: Kilby, Lehovec, Noyce and Hoerni . Sorab Ghandhi in "Theory and Practice of Microelectronics" (1968) wrote that the patents of Lehovec and Hoerni were the high point of semiconductor technology of the 1950s and opened the way for the mass production of ICs . </P> <P> In October 1966, Kilby and Noyce were awarded the Ballantine Medal from the Franklin Institute "for their significant and essential contribution to the development of integrated circuits". This event initiated the idea of two inventors . The nomination of Kilby was criticized by contemporaries who did not recognize his prototypes as "real" semiconductor ICs . Even more controversial was the nomination of Noyce: the engineering community was well aware of the role of the Moore, Hoerni and other key inventors, whereas Noyce at the time of his invention was CEO of Fairchild and did not participate directly in the creation of the first IC . Noyce himself admitted, "I was trying to solve a production problem . I wasn't trying to make an integrated circuit". </P>

Who invented the integrated circuit and in which year