Japan's Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Texas Instruments Inc. seeking compensation for an alleged patent violation by Japanese computer giant Fujitsu Ltd., a court spokesman said Apr. 11. Texas Instruments alleged that Fujitsu did not pay royalties after using its "Kilby 275" patent, a modified version of the original U.S. Kilby patent approved in 1964 that protected a circuit-insulation technology. According to a Texas Instruments press release, the court said the patent is not infringed by Fujitsu in manufacturing its 1-Mb and 4-Mb dynamic random access memories (DRAMs) and its 36K erasable, programmable read-only memories. Further, "This decision does not affect the terms and conditions of any of TI's existing cross-licensing agreements or the company's royalty revenue. TI expects to continue to receive an ongoing stream of royalty revenue from its license agreements, most of which have 10-year lives and were signed after the Tokyo District Court originally determined non-infringement in 1994. The Kilby patent expires in 2001 and was, therefore, not expected to be relevant to future license agreements," the release states.