The founding of the new company was followed by Sperry Rand filing a lawsuit against National Semiconductor for patent infringement. By 1965, as it was reaching the courts, the preliminaries of the lawsuit had caused the stock value of National to be depressed. The depressed stock values allowed Peter J Sprague to invest heavily in the company with Sprague's family funds. Sprague also relied on further financial backing from a pair of West Coast investment firms and a New York underwriter to take control as the chairman of National Semiconductor. At that time Sprague was 27 years old. Jeffrey S. Young characterized the era as the beginning of venture capitalism.