Patent ID: 7273483

Claim:
A system for implementing surgical procedures comprising: an ultrasonic surgical hand piece; an end-effector, said end-effector being connectable to said hand piece, and said end-effector being selected from the group consisting of a blade, an assembly of a blade and a sheath, shears, scissors and forceps; a generator console for controlling the hand piece, wherein the console sends a drive current to drive the hand piece, which drive current imparts ultrasonic longitudinal movement to the end-effector; and a memory disposed in the end-effector which adjusts operation of the generator console for operation with the end effector to set a cutting rate and degree of tissue hemostasis with the end effector, and further stores a handicap limit and a disable limit, wherein the console reads information stored in the memory to determine whether a copyrighted data string is present and instructs the hand piece to operate in a handicap mode if a number of defective blades found in a time period of operating the hand piece exceeds the handicap limit, and the console disables the hand piece if the number of defective blades found in the time period exceeds the disable limit; wherein the hand piece is authenticated for use with the console if the data string is present.