Bizarre Patents
Combination Beverage Container and Spittoon
A combination beverage container and spittoon includes a bottom portion including outer wall and a first inner wall defining a spittoon space.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 6129597 | Bypass system for CATV signal tap A system for bypassing a signal tap that includes a pair of plug ports which are aligned with a pair of contact terminals that connect the conductors to the tap. The system generally comprises a pair of contact plugs adapted to be inserted into the plug p... | 10/10/2000 |
| 6057876 | Dual conversion settop terminal including a system for avoiding oscillator difference beats An improved multiple conversion CATV settop terminal eliminates the adverse effects of oscillator difference beats by selectively controlling local oscillators and the use of a wideband bandpass filter. The wideband bandpass filter is coupled between the ... | 05/02/2000 |
| 6013876 | Method and device for electrically connecting circuits to opposite surfaces of a printed circuit board A device and method provide an easy and inexpensive electrical connection between circuits on both sides of a printed circuit board. A through-hole is formed in the board with conductive copper pads around the periphery of the hole on both sides of the ci... | 01/11/2000 |
| 5950068 | Method of fabricating semiconductor devices having a mesa structure for improved surface voltage breakdown characteristics A semiconductor device comprises a monocrystalline silicon wafer having a major surface lying in the {100} crystal plane. Disposed on the surface is a mesa having a generally square cross-section with generally rounded corners. The mesa has four main side... | 09/07/1999 |
| 5830781 | Semiconductor device soldering process A pair of metal lead frames are stacked together with a plurality of solder coated semiconductor chips sandwiched between respective pairs of overlapped portions of the lead frames and the lead frame stack is then disposed within a fixture comprising spac... | 11/03/1998 |
| 5784095 | Digital audio system with video output program guide The improved settop terminal of the present invention utilizes a subscriber's television as the preferred graphical interface to simultaneously provide channel in-band and out-of-band program information to a subscriber. A subscriber may tune, view and se... | 07/21/1998 |
| 5781226 | Network virtual memory for a cable television settop terminal The present invention comprises a memory management system employed in a settop terminal which utilizes memory available at the headend of a CATV system through a bidirectional CATV network to augment the memory resident within the settop terminal. The sy... | 07/14/1998 |
| 5773874 | Semiconductor device having a mesa structure for surface voltage breakdown A semiconductor device comprises a monocrystalline silicon wafer having a major surface lying in the crystal plane. Disposed on the surface is a mesa having a generally square cross-section with generally rounded corners. The mesa has four main side... | 06/30/1998 |
| 5767754 | Balanced to unbalanced transmission line impedance transformer exhibiting low insertion loss A balanced to unbalanced transmission line transformer is disclosed performing impedance transformation with improved frequency response across a wide operational bandwidth. The transmission line transformer significantly improves low frequency output bal... | 06/16/1998 |
| 5742591 | Interference cancellation system for CATV return transmissions A CATV interference cancellation system reduces the presence of undesirable narrowband interference that corrupts return signal transmissions. The cancellation system first acquires a reference signal that contains components related to the interference p... | 04/21/1998 |
| 5739868 | Apparatus for processing mixed YUV and color palettized video signals Apparatus processes mixed YUV and color palettized video signals for display on an interlaced NTSC or PAL television receiver by storing first and second fields of one or more sprites in a graphic memory. Each sprite is stored as YUV or color palettized d... | 04/14/1998 |
| 5708574 | Adaptive power direct current preregulator A direct current (dc) overvoltage, pre-regulation circuit regulates dc voltage supplied to a cable television line amplifier. The circuit provides overvoltage protection while permitting continuous operation of the line amplifier. The circuit opens the in... | 01/13/1998 |
| 5698242 | Apparatus for the injection molding of semiconductor elements An injection molding apparatus includes a nozzle which is directly connected to a mold for injecting a molding material into the mold. The mold defines at least one cavity in the shape of a element to be molded and at least one gate passage, each gate pas... | 12/16/1997 |
| 5696765 | Configurable hybrid medium access control for cable metropolitan area networks The hybrid medium access control MAC system is configurable to the type of communication required to support a desired application or service. The MAC system analyzes services requested from a settop terminal, or a network controller client, and determine... | 12/09/1997 |
| 5692910 | Printed-circuit board for use with card-edge connector and method A PC board for mating with a card-edge connector having a selectively configured projecting tab which defines a desired insertion force profile to facilitate engagement. A portion of the projecting tab is notched to delay the initial contact from the inte... | 12/02/1997 |
| 5687257 | Adaptive coding level control for video compression systems An apparatus and method for adaptively compressing blocks of video image data provide a local coding level for use in compressing successive blocks of video image data. Each block is preliminarily compressed using a global coding level. The preliminarily ... | 11/11/1997 |
| 5677562 | Planar P-N junction semiconductor structure with multilayer passivation A semiconductor device, which has a silicon body that includes at least one planar p-n junction that intersects a surface of the body, uses a multilayer arrangement that includes a first layer of thermally grown silicon dioxide, a second layer of Chemical... | 10/14/1997 |
| 5666358 | Method and apparatus for supporting TDMA operating over hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) or other channels In a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) communication network, a central office (CO) provides interactive communication between a service provider and a plurality of user terminals. To synchronize transmissions of the user terminals, a timebase timer in... | 09/09/1997 |
| 5650908 | Surge arrestor for RF devices An improved surge arrestor for RF devices includes a bifilar conductor pair wound around a ferrite core wherein one end of each conductor is grounded. The energy of RF signals input to the surge arrestor from an RF transmission line is transferred from th... | 07/22/1997 |
| 5644637 | Method and apparatus for recovering synchronizing signals in scrambled television pictures Suppressed synchronizing signals of a scrambled standard TV picture are recovered and the picture unscrambled by a method including the steps of: separating a video portion having suppressed sync signals from an audio portion of a TV picture at an interme... | 07/01/1997 |
| 5640043 | High voltage silicon diode with optimum placement of silicon-germanium layers A high voltage silicon rectifier includes a substrate portion and an epitaxial mesa portion that is a frustrum of a pyramid with a substantially square cross section and side walls that make a forty five degree angle with the substrate portion. The mesa p... | 06/17/1997 |
| 5640212 | Video signal clipping circuitry and method for color television broadcasting Cost effective video clipping circuitry and method achieve lower distortion color television broadcasting. Excess "white" level voltage peaks in otherwise standard (e.g., that of the National Television Standards Committee) color line video signals are cl... | 06/17/1997 |
| 5638422 | Distributed antenna personal communication networks system A distributed antenna PCN system provides for telephone service on a CATV network. The PCN antenna signal from one PCN node is transported to more than one remotely located antenna nodes via the cable. Thus, rather than having a PCN cell shape equal to th... | 06/10/1997 |
| 5614759 | Automated assembly of semiconductor devices using a pair of lead frames Semiconductor rectifier devices having oppositely extending terminals lying in a common plane are fabricated using upper and lower lead frames each comprising a pair of parallel side rails and spaced apart cross bars extending between the side rails. Cant... | 03/25/1997 |
| 5610434 | Mesa semiconductor structure Mesa diodes of improved mechanical properties are formed by providing a central depression in the regions of the chip from which the mesa is formed before the diffusion step that forms the rectifying junction in the mesa. In symmetric diodes, symmetric de... | 03/11/1997 |
| 5574495 | Cable television data path error analyzer located at the set-top terminal A system for determining the quality of data received by settop terminals including at least one settop terminal which analyses each data packet received by the settop terminal and determines whether the received data packet includes errors. The bit error... | 11/12/1996 |
| 5572517 | Configurable hybrid medium access control for cable metropolitan area networks The hybrid medium access control MAC system is configurable to the type of communication required to support a desired application or service. The MAC system analyzes services requested from a settop terminal, or a network controller client, and determine... | 11/05/1996 |
| 5541666 | Method and apparatus for overlaying digitally generated graphics over an analog video signal A system for overlaying digital character signals on an analog video source signal including a predetermined color subcarrier includes a subcarrier phase lock loop, a digital character generating device, a digital video encoder, and a switching device. Th... | 07/30/1996 |
| 5539823 | Subscription television picture scrambling and descrambling system providing compatibility with different such systems Video signal scrambling and descrambling methods and apparatus for a subscription TV system are provided which are compatible with other equipment operating in accordance with pre-existing modes of signal scrambling and descrambling. Coded indicator signa... | 07/23/1996 |
| 5506174 | Automated assembly of semiconductor devices using a pair of lead frames Semiconductor rectifier devices having oppositely extending terminals lying in a common plane are fabricated using upper and lower lead frames each comprising a pair of parallel side rails and spaced apart cross bars extending between the side rails. Cant... | 04/09/1996 |
| 5497404 | Transmission error recovery for digital communication systems using variable length data packets where data is stored in header locations of memory A succession of variable length data packets containing a header portion and data portion are received. Selected data from the data packet headers is stored in designated locations of a header memory. A data packet start address is provided with each stor... | 03/05/1996 |
| 5497112 | Power-out reset system A power-out reset circuit includes reference voltage and current generators to generate a reference voltage and a reference current which are essentially independent of temperature variations over a useful temperature range, a delay/disable circuit, over ... | 03/05/1996 |
| 5484097 | Fabrication of hybrid semiconductor devices Two phase bridge rectifiers are fabricated starting with three lead flames and bonding a first pair of semiconductor chips on mounting pads of a first of the frames and a second pair of semiconductor chips on mounting pads of a second of the frames. The f... | 01/16/1996 |
| 5475498 | Recording random data having a first data rate on a digital video recorder at an independent second data rate Interface apparatus is provided for enabling a digital video recorder to function as a universal data recorder. A random input data stream provided at a first data rate is converted to a format that emulates a video signal. The converted input data is inp... | 12/12/1995 |
| 5450392 | Reduction of interchannel harmonic distortions in an analog and digital signal multiplex A frequency allocation is provided to minimize the effects of amplifier distortion in a mixed analog and digital cable television system. In particular, successive digital channel signals having a bandwidth substantially equal to ω are separated by a pai... | 09/12/1995 |
| 5426701 | Cable television converter box with a smart card connector underneath A Cable Television (CATV) Converter box or computer has a Smart Card connector mounted in a bottom wall thereof. The Converter box includes a case having a top wall, the bottom wall, and four side walls, a main printed circuit (PC) board mounted within th... | 06/20/1995 |
| 5416629 | Intensity modulated digital optical communications using a frequency modulated signal laser In long distance digital and frequency modulation systems that use optical sources having optical frequency chirp, degradation due to optical dispersion in the transmission fiber is overcome by filtering the laser wavelength representative of one of the b... | 05/16/1995 |
| 5408525 | Diverter interface between two telecommunication lines and a station set A diverter interfaces first and second telecommunication lines from first and second telecommunication sources, respectively, with a third line coupled to a station set. The diverter includes separate line and set monitors and a control unit. The line and... | 04/18/1995 |
| 5408502 | Apparatus and method for communicating digital data using trellis coded QAM with punctured convolutional codes Digital data is communicated using trellis coded QAM. Symbols are coded for transmission using a rate 1/2 convolutional encoder punctured to rate 2/3. The coded symbols are transmitted for receipt at a receiver. At the receiver, two sets of branch metrics... | 04/18/1995 |
| 5406228 | Ring oscillator with frequency control loop An oscillator system and method in which a time period (inverse of frequency) of a multi-stage ring oscillator (ROSC) is adjusted by a bias current which controls the charging and discharging times of respective capacitors (e.g., interelectrode capacities... | 04/11/1995 |
