leadership position in some markets, focusing instead on the highly competitive (and eventually unprofitable) DRAM business. Unfortunately the DRAM marketplace was the beachhead where Japanese firms would make their successful assault on the global semiconductor market. In 1985, when 64K DRAM memory chips were the most common memory chips used in computers, and when more than 60 percent of those chips were produced by Japanese companies, semiconductor makers in the United States (including Mostek spin-off Micron) accused Japanese companies of export dumping for the purpose of driving makers in the United States out of the commodity memory chip business. Prices for the 64K product plummeted to as low as 35 cents apiece from $3.50 within 18 months, with disastrous financial consequences for some U.S. firms. On 4 December 1985 the US Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration ruled in favor of the complaint, but the ruling would be too late to save Mostek. By 1986, all United States chip makers had stopped making DRAMs. Mostek's 256K DRAM was delayed by a then-ambitious double-layer metallization design. In 1985, when the price for 64Ks had collapsed and 256K prices were already under $10, Mostek's 256K device was still not ready for volume production, and the company suffered heavy losses. Eventually, in the fall of 1985, UTC gave up, closed Mostek completely, and then sold it to Thomson-CSF, a French Government electronics company, for a mere $71 million. Thomson called back only about 20% of the workforce in an attempt to return Mostek to profitability. In 1987 Thomson merged its semiconductor operations, including Mostek, with the Italian SGS-ATES to become STMicroelectronics, based in Geneva, Switzerland. At the time of the merger the new corporation was named SGS-THOMSON but took its current name of STMicroelectronics in May 1998 following Thomson's sale of its shares. Mostek's intellectual property portfolio, which included many foundational patents in DRAM technology, turned out to be highly valuable. STM started a series of lawsuits to collect royalties and between 1987 and 1993 made $450 million on these licenses alone. Spinoffs Jerry Rogers founded Cyrix in 1988 to capitalize on the Mostek second source agreement that allowed any 80x86 processor to be legally copied, which Intel attempted to stop via lawsuits. Eventually, after losing many legal battles, Intel simply changed the name of the 80586 to the Pentium, thereby ending the agreement. Micron Technology was a very successful spinoff founded by a