US Patent no.7336123

[electrosys]

I was recently doing some basic research for a marine electronic compass design - and came across this patent's abstract:

In a chopper amplifier circuit operable at a low voltage utilizing a switched operational amplifier, a chopper modulator chopper-modulates an input signal according to a predetermined control signal, and outputs a chopper-modulated signal. An amplifier circuit constituted by the switched operational amplifier amplifies the chopper-modulated signal outputted from the chopper modulator, and outputs an amplified chopper-modulated signal. A chopper-demodulator of the switched operational amplifier chopper-demodulates the amplified chopper-modulated signal outputted from the amplifier circuit according to the control signal, and outputs a demodulated output signal as a chopper-amplified output signal from an output terminal. A chopper modulator chopper-modulates a demodulated signal outputted from the chopper demodulator according to the control signal, and outputs a chopper-modulated signal to an input terminal of the amplifier circuit.

So now you know ...

Right - so now go back to the beginning and read it again ... only this time: quickly.

 

[prv]

I have a patent in my name (though owned by my employer). Having explained the idea on paper and in person to a lawyer, he went off to write the patent document and sent it to me to check.

Complete and total gibberish, so I did my own.

(It did get some further light lawyerising before being filed, but the text is mostly mine.)

Pete

 

[electrosys]

I just thought this was a great tongue-twister, and wanted to share it.

But as a patent abstract, well - let's say I've seen better ...

 

[Twister_Ken]

All those choppers, but no mention of hogs.

 

[westernman]

I had a patent granted which I had explained to the patent department of a large company.

Every so often, I was given a bunch of new patents to review to see if there would be any impact on the work we were doing.

My patent was in the bunch but I did not recognize it, nor see its relevance to what we were doing. The patent was on the circuit we were doing!

The patent system is not for inventors but for lawyers.