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extends to 200 kHz. Someone recognizes that the device traces a set of curves that look just like a quality triode, and in fact, just like the 300B and quickly rushes off to the patent office with capital venture funding and 200 old tube circuit schematics, such as the Cathode Follower, the Grounded Cathode amplifier, the SRPP circuit, the Williamson amplifier, Mr. Karsten's amplifier, the Marantz 9 amplifier that all have been redrawn with the new solid-state part in place of all the tubes. Should this person be granted exclusive use of all 200 circuits?
The amazingly multitalented Don Lancaster has written some excellent articles where he argues not so much that circuits should not receive patents, but that it seldom works to the engineer's benefit to do so. He argues that a better bet is to design a good circuit that becomes associated with your name (the Williamson Amplifier comes to mind) and then your efforts will be sought out by those in need of cleverness.
If electronic circuit patents make so little sense, why do companies waste their money on patenting derivative and obvious circuits?
My best guess is that they hope to prevent exact copies from be produced. But as it would only take using a slightly different resistor value here and there and a different tube type to blow the whole patent issue out of the water, as the patent claimed that, since prior art exists for every sub-circuit used and the mixing of those sub-circuits is obvious, the tube types and part values and the particular arrangement of sub-circuits used altogether was the invention. (In fact, I have seen perfectly legal knock-offs of a famous name preamp that had all its resistor and capacitors values scaled up by the exact same percentage from the original values.)
Why does the Patent Office put up with these wastes of time and effort?
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My guess is that they do not care. If the appropriate fees are paid, they do not care if a claim is new, novel, useful, non-obvious, or old, derivative, useless, obvious, or even pointless. They issue the patent and the lawyers and courts will figure out if they should have done so. How can I be so cynical? Easy, I have seen the silliest patents issued. Recently, I have heard that someone patented using a directly coupled Cathode Follower to the grid of an output tube.
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