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"...quick rush to the patent office or trademark this" Too late. This is in Ralph Karsten's patent. And while you are at it, understand that any circuit that uses floating power supplies is an infringement on his patent.
I am confused. I have a copy of Ralph Karsten's patent here somewhere and I remember him only describing hooking the load up to the cathodes. Does he own more than one patent? I remember the patent consisting of a Dr. L. B. Hedge circuit (1956) driving a floating power supply balanced amplifier (1920's ?), both of which I had read about a decade before his patent in decades-old magazines and books. Mr. Karsten's bold invention seems to reside in that he connected a preexisting balanced input stage to the preexisting balanced output stage. Well, what else would one attach to it, an unbalanced stage? I can only count about 4 types of balanced circuits, so he really should have gotten 4 patents to cover all bases. This is not to pick on Mr. Karsten in particular; in fact, I believe he is an honest, hard-working fellow who offers good valued amplifiers.
By the way, I find reading just about every recent tube based patent an incredibly underwhelming experience, always obvious in the extreme. All the big boys (Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, etc.) patent all their amplifiers, even though everyone of them is derivative in the extreme (except for the supporting circuitry, such as high voltage regulators and bias circuits, some of which are very clever and truly original).
Can you imagine one company trying to sue another because both make an amplifier with four 6550s in the push-pull output stage? "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we and we alone are allowed to use four 6550 in a push-pull output stage, as we invented it and we own the patent and anyone who wants to use four 6550's has to pay us big." Sure, good thing Ford did not patent using four wheels on a car.
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Are you saying that circuit designers do not have a right to legally protect their innovations?
Actually, I am sure a patent lawyer could make a strong case for the patentablity of circuits in general, but it would take a knockdown argument to convince me that trivial and obvious circuits would not be covered as well. Until I hear that argument, I continue not believe tube circuits, transistor circuits, MOSFET circuits, or any combination of these components in a circuit should be patentable. Tubes, Transistors, MOSFET's and IC's themselves, yes; but circuits, no. No more than sentence structure should be patentable. "Only Acme Co. can use sentences that end in a preposition." Wouldn't this be the silliest thing you could think of?
Or what about a chess player who wishes to have his opening moves patented? But chess has nothing in common with electronic circuits you might be thinking. But it does; at the very least both tend to appeal most to bright people. Further, both are finite. Let me explain what I mean by finite. If we limit a chess game to just the first ten moves, we come up with an astoundingly huge number of possible moves. Obviously, most of the move possible would never be played as they are foolish. Now if we limit the electronic part inventory to say just one resistor, one capacitor, one battery, one light bulb, and one diode, we come up with a much smaller number of possible circuit combinations. Once again, most of the possible circuit combinations will be non-functional. Does it make any sense to grant a patent for each of these circuits? If we add new parts to our inventory, the finite number of possible combinations increases surely, but this number is still finite.
Here is a thought experiment: a big electronic company invents a new solid-state component whose main intended use is controlling stoplight switching, as its bandwidth only
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