Fuijo Masuoka, a Toshiba employee, was awarded ¥87 million ($749,225) by a Tokyo court as a result of winning a patent case.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun said that while Masuoka had wanted 1.1 billion for inventing flash memory, the award is nevertheless the third biggest ever awarded in employee patent cases.

Masuoka, now a professor at Tohoku University, had registered 500 patents when he worked at Toshiba. Toshiba paid six million yen to him while he was working there to transfer the patents.

The flash patents represent a mere 41 out of the 500 he transferred.

This news article was written on July 27, 2006, quoting Nihon Keizai Shimbun.