There's definitely a certain uniqueness to the legalese of patent titles. At times they're simultaneously so vague, yet so oddly specific. The Dave Smith quote

There's definitely a certain uniqueness to the legalese of patent titles. At times they're simultaneously so vague, yet so oddly specific. The Dave Smith quote in the footnotes of my DX7 technical analysis (it's linked in Ken's article) provide an interesting insight into how synth companies approached patenting: "If you have a lot of patents and somebody comes after you, chances are one of your patents will overlap enough with one of their patents that you can negotiate a deal so nobody gets hurt. Whereas if you don't have anything to offer and you have nothing in your stable of patents, then you're stuck" Some of Yamaha's FM synth patents have equally strange names. On the subject of Yamaha's FM patents, it's a shame that there isn't more information available about Norio Tomisawa, the engineer responsible for most of these designs. His name is on all of the FM patents. He played a huge role in the development of modern synthesis.