[Antennas] Antenna-Related Patents

Wed Oct 15 12:09:44 EDT 2008

I think this patent, as narrowly construed, could hold up. Although
binocular cores are common, all the ones I have seen are tiny ones
for receiving. And using them for transmit is not obvious to the
average engineer. (If it were obvious, people would be doing it).
It is fairly easy to get around the patent, such as with the baluns K9YC
talks about. I suspect they are even better than the binocular
core ones in the patent. Also, I don't know where you would get
large binocular cores. Maybe Tom paid for tooling to make them.
It costs several 1000ドル to make the tooling.
Having filed dozens of patent applications, I can tell you that
this is the patent system we have, for better or worse. The high
cost of filing patents might discourage these niche patents in
the future.
I'm not aware of Tom claiming that baluns did not exist.
I would be surprised if he actually said that. Can
you give us an example?
Rick Karlquist N6RK
Chris Trask wrote:
> Every once in a while I run across a patent where it's extremely obvious
> that someone has patented public domain property by way of twisting language
> around, such as the extensive ones granted to Parker Vision years ago. I
> ran across a recent one of these yesterday evening:
>> http://tinyurl.com/3qjms3
>> It's a simple choke balun made with a binocular core. These have been
> around for so long that it's very likely that the prototype has
> disintegrated back to dust. However, one look at the inventor's name made
> it very clear what had taken place. Those of you who have been around this
> hobby for any length of time will probably recognize the name right away.
> The filing date is right around the time when this fellow was running around
> on various lists claiming that baluns and transmission line transformers in
> general did not exist.
>> Some things never change.
>> ,----------------------. High Performance Mixers and
> / What's all this \ Amplifiers for RF Communications
> / extinct stuff, anyhow? /
> \ _______,--------------' Chris Trask / N7ZWY
> _ |/ Principal Engineer
> oo\ Sonoran Radio Research
> (__)\ _ P.O. Box 25240
> \ \ .' `. Tempe, Arizona 85285-5240
> \ \ / \
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> . ( ) \
> '-| )__| :. \ Email: christrask at earthlink.net
> | | | | \ '. http://www.home.earthlink.net/~christrask
> c__; c__; '-..'>.__
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