Comment by floatrock
7 months ago
Key point here is the SawStop CEO is promising to open up the patent and make it available for anyone, so it's a bit more complicated than the typical regulatory-capture lawyer success story.
The 3-point seat belt is another time this happened and probably one of the few feel-good "this should be available to everyone" patent stories: Volvo designed it, decided the safety-for-humanity* benefits outweighed patent protections, and made the patent open for anyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin (*: at least the segment of humanity that drives cars)
I'd be curious to hear the cynical take here. If I was to wargame it, I would guess something like: SawStop doesn't want to compete with Harbor Freight and cheap chinese tool manufacturers -- that's a race to the bottom, and power tools have turned into ecosystem lock-in plays which makes it difficult for a niche manufacturer to win in. So they'd rather compete on just the safety mechanism since they have a decade head start on it. They're too niche to succeed on SawStop(TM) workbenches, and they forsee bigger profits in a "[DeWalt|Milwaukee|EGo|...], Protected by SawStop(TM)" world.
If you go listen to their CEO's testimony, he clearly states that the one single original patent behind the idea is now open but was expiring anyway. He brags about them spending a lot of money on R&D and needing to recoup that, reiterating that they have many other patents that aren't being opened that cover the exact implementation. He talked about them exploring those other methods, choosing not to patent them, and only patenting the best solution.
All his words. He's trying to explain that sure, the patent is open, but companies are still going to have to work harder than Sawstop because they have many more patents they refuse to open that cover the best and most logical implementation of this idea.
You're asking for a "cynical" take, but it's not really cynical! The CEO is trying to tell everyone, openly, and they're not listening. They are NOT altruistic, otherwise they would have opened the entire suite of patents. They are openly saying this singular patent is open, because it doesn't matter and that they will doggedly defend their other patents. Now, every other manufacturer will now need to navigate a minefield of patent litigation, and follow the path of subpar implementations that Sawstop ruled out during their R&D.
I don't know why everyone is ignoring his testimony and thinking the company is giving anything up, it's wild!
If there is a mandate, then they have to license the patents under FRAND terms.
FRAND terms which will be buried in litigation for the next 20 years.
Interesting, didn’t know about that aspect of US law. Don’t see any reason to delay an implementation then.
Why not just set the mandate to begin after most of these patents expire? I would really not brush off how serious of a safety problem this is, but honestly I’d rather the government either delay the implementation or buy out the patents because this is a blatant market failure of public interest that the government is well poised to address. Digit amputation incurs a public cost even in America.
Patents are already a government manipulation of markets. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been a market failure if there were never any patents around it.
> they have many more patents
How does that work though?
If the patent covers something that was already in the first version of the device, it should be either patented before 2004 and thus expired, or patented afterwards and thus invalid due to prior art, no?
Consider patent 223,898 and then consider patent 239,153 and 425,761 and pay attention to the initial wording ( https://www.thomasedison.org/edison-patents )
https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2104.html
> 35 U.S.C. 101 Inventions patentable.
> Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2103.html
> 35 U.S.C. 101 has been interpreted as imposing four requirements: (i) only one patent may be obtained for an invention; (ii) the inventor(s) must be identified in an application filed on or after September 16, 2012 or must be the applicant in applications filed before September 16, 2012; (iii) the claimed invention must be eligible for patenting; and (iv) the claimed invention must be useful (have utility).
The prior art requirement isn't "there exists nothing like this before" but rather "this invention hasn't been listed before".
https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2120.html
> A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
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The cynical take is more that it's crappy blade guards that nobody uses that really should be improved, and it's not necessary to mandate SawStop-style blade breaking technology.
I tend to agree with Jim Hamilton, Stumpy Nubs on youtube, who was quoted in this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk
Bascially, mandating the more expensive blade brakes instead of standards around blade guards will eliminate cheap table saws from the market. And yes, this has happened before with radial arm saws - they are now basically non-existent in the US.
So it definitely benefits SawStop to give away this patent, as their saws will look a hell of a lot "cheaper" than competition.
SawStop often breaks the saw itself, not just the blade. There's alot of energy being put into the saw all at once, and I've seen examples where it fractured the mounts of the saw itself when it engaged.
That's of course great, if you're in the business of selling saws, not so great if you're in the business of buying saws.
I have been associated with four hackerspaces that have SawStop's.
I have seen an average of about one false firing a month--generally moisture but sometimes a jig gets close enough to cause something. I have seen 4 "genuine" firings of which 2 would have been an extremely serious injury. This is over about 8 years--call it 10 years.
So, 4 spaces * 10 years * 12 months * $100 replacement = $48,000 paid in false firings vs 4 life changing injuries over 10 years. That's a pretty good tradeoff.
Professional settings should be way better than a bunch of rank amateurs. Yeah, we all know they aren't because everybody is being shoved to finish as quickly as possible, but proper procedures would minimize the false firings.
Part of the problem with false firing is that SawStop are the only people collecting any data and that's a very small number of incidents relative to the total number of incidents from all table saws. SawStop wants the data bad enough that if you get a "real" firing, SawStop will send you a new brake back when you send them the old one just so they can look at the data.
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If it engaged incorrectly, absolutely. If it saved my thumb and I have to buy a new saw as a result, it's hard to imagine a price point where I'd call the outcome not so great.
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This is true, it can also fracture the motor mounts and not be noticed, until you are performing a difficult and aggressive cut and the motor mount breaks with a spinning motor attached and your board shoots across the room or into your face.
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I ran the woodshop at a local makerspace. We went through a lot of sawstop cartridges...easily 10-15 a year. The saw was never damaged because of the cartridge firing.
> That's of course great, if you're in the business of selling saws, not so great if you're in the business of buying saws.
OTOH (literally?) keeping your fingers but having to buy a new saw seems pretty reasonable.
I've seen all of the talking points, but a regulation probably is required simply to force liability.
The biggest "excuse" I have seen from the saw manufacturers is that if they put this kind of blade stop on their system that they are now liable for injuries that occur in spite of the blade stop or because of a non-firing blade stop. And that is probably true!
Even if this specific regulation doesn't pass, it's time that the saw manufacturers have to eat the liability from injuries from using these saws to incentivize making them safer.
As for cost, the blade stops are extremely low volume right now, I can easily see the price coming down if the volume is a couple of orders of magnitude larger.
We had one of these in my highschool woodshop - they would demo it once a year on the parents night because of the expense. I'd rather see this regulated in a way that says places like schools or production woodshops would need these from an insurance perspective, but home woodshops wouldn't be required to
Why are radial arm saws so dangerous? I have an old one and other than shooting wood into the shop wall when ripping, or holding the wood with your hand it seems pretty hard to hurt yourself. Circular saws seem way more dangerous, and the only injury I've ever had was from a portaband.
There used to be some pretty wild published advice on how to use a radial arm saw including ripping full sheets of plywood by walking the sheet across the cutting plane with the saw pointed at your stomach. They also travel towards the operator in the event of a catch because of the direction of the blade and the floating arbor. This makes positioning yourself out of the potential path of the blade critical and the one thing we know is that you can't trust people to be safe on a job site when they are in a hurry.
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https://www.grainger.com/product/DAYTON-Radial-Arm-Saw-120V-... here you go
You do realize you linked to a discontinued product that costs over $5k?
This is what I actually expect to happen to the table saw market - they all become expensive, and the sub-$1k market (which is huge) goes away. Yes, you can find an RAS but it's about 10x the price of what they used to be.
I found a RAS from Sears from 1995: $499, which is around $1000 with inflation. https://archive.org/details/SearsCraftsmanPowerAndHandTools1...
So I stand by my statement: they're effectively non-existent, demand is gone after the 2001 recall by Craftsman, and most of the major manufacturers have stopped producing them. I expect the same thing to happen to table saws.
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Elimination of competitors through safety standards has happened before.
Heinz was the first company to make shelf stable ketchup without any of the chemical stabilizers that had been in use before, and then successfully lobbied against preservatives. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-heinz-ketch...
It's the same with efficiency standards, happened with lightbulbs, is currently happening with the "technically not an EV mandate."
I wish we had a way to enact this kind of legislation without massively distorting markets.
Is there a downside to lightbulb efficiency standards? I am glad that my lightbulbs are now 10 watts instead of 60w.
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Big Tobacco is trying this now with e-Cigarettes.
Pushing for regulations that only they have the scale to meet, as they are entering the vaping market.
Standard oil invented tanker cars and built pipelines. Everyone else was stuck unloading 55 gallon drums from normal railcars beacuse of patents and relative lack of investment.
Then the government broke standard oil up, rather than revoke the patent or reform the system in away way, and prices got higher for consumers in the end.
This is often brought up as a success story. Patents never have worked as intended.
At least with Heinz recipes are specifically not covered by patents.
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Great read - didn't expect to learn that today!
I’m not utterly opposed to this regulation, but I do think SawStop stands to benefit. Even if the patents are open, it will take competitors a long time to develop new products. Meanwhile, SawStop will get the distribution that they don’t currently have. Just glancing at the HomeDepot website, I see that they sell SawStop but they are not stocked at my local store. I imagine that if this goes through, every Physical store in the country will need to stock their saws, at least until their competitors put out products. in the meantime, they can get much better economies of scale, and then try to compete on price
Bosch already has these table saws ready and available for jobsite-type of saws, they are sold in Canada I think. Techtronic Industries (Milwaukee, Ryobi) and Stanley Black & Decker (DeWalt) are huge enough to just push through and it will filter to all the brands they manufacture. Delta is smaller, but this is their bread and butter so probably they have some technology lying in wait.
The higher end table saws is probably a different story, they are even smaller manufacturers, but a lot of that stuff is different anyway.
Bosch pulled their saws from the market. Speculation is that they were unreliable or posed some sort of liability risk.
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Usually these types of laws come with a date in the future that they will actually be implemented giving such competitors time to figure these things out.
Yeah, i looked at the proposal in more depth and it proposes 36 months from publication until the rule takes effect [1]. That does seem like a lot of time (the proposal itself notes that this is longer than usual).
I guess the benefit to SawStop is that they sell a better product, but turns out most people won't pay 2-3x the price for the added benefit. If they can make everyone implement the same feature, then they still probably won't compete on price, but the price difference will go down, and perhaps people will pay a low to medium premium for a slightly better safety mechanism.
As far as regulatory capture goes, it doesn't sound particularly nefarious. I do believe that the folks at SawStop genuinely believe this is necessary regulation.
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-23898/p-145
There are competing systems both international and domestic that have been forced off the shelves by sawstop.
It's not outrageous that a business's investors are rewarded for an innovation that benefits humanity.
One thing I don't see mentioned with any of these discussions is that this massively increases the cost of using different kinds of blades on the saw. If you need to use a specialty blade that's a smaller diameter, it requires a matching special size safety cartridge. Dado stack? Another, even more expensive cartridge. I know most people typically have one blade on the saw and never change it or if they do, it's just another of the same size, but for those of us who do regularly swap out blades that aren't the standard 10" x 1/8", these types of regulations add both significant cost and time/frustration.
I'm all for safety and would love for there to be more options for this kind of tech from other saw makers, but I personally don't think regulation is necessarily the right way to do it. Just like there are legitimate cases for removing the blade guard, there are legitimate cases for running without this safety feature, especially one that would require several hundred dollars more investment even if the safety feature is disabled (On SawStop, you physically can't mount a dado stack unless you buy a special dado stack cartridge).
And if SawStop really wanted to improve safety for everyone... well I find it rather telling that they'll only open their patent if the regulation becomes law. Since they're effectively the only ones with the tech, with the regulation passed, buyers instantly have only one option for however long it takes for competitors to come to market with their own (which they'll be hesitant to do based only on a spoken promise by the patent holder). Instant pseudo-monopoly.
It takes 3 minutes to swap out the normal saw stop cartridge and put the one in for dado blades. Setting up the thickness and putting the dado stack on takes twice as long. If you are doing enough woodworking that you have a dado stack and specialty blades the saw stop cartridge is not that big of a deal.
Cynical take is that the SawStop feature adds enough cost to budget table saws that they will no longer be economically viable and you can only purchase mid-high end tables saws going forward.
This is pretty true. Sawstop adds more to the cost of a low end table saw than a low end table saw is worth.
Then I guess the question really is: do we think (probably less experienced) consumers should be able to buy table saws that can easily accidentally cut their fingers off, in a way that is preventable but too costly?
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But does it actually cost that much more or does SawStop just price their saws at a premium for having a premium feature?
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Another cynical take would be that SawStop has secretly invested heavily in a saw blade manufacturers to profit from more blades being destroyed when the stop event occurs.
Competitor's versions of this don't destroy the blade. The reason competition no longer exist is because SawStop sued based on the limb detection, not the blade repositioning tech.
Expect better than SawStop to appear when able, and this issue to go away.
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"curious to hear the cynical take here"
My first cynical reaction is to ask which politicians will benefit handsomely from stock trading with SawStop stock (assuming it's a publicly traded company) or through kickbacks of one kind or another.
I think SawStop table saws are terrific for woodworkers who work in their own shop. Less so for workers who have to bring their tools to the job site. Yes, I know that SawStop makes a portable table saw. When you're working at a job site, you have less control over the materials you're working with (as compared to the cabinet maker in his/her own shop). SawStop technology isn't compatible with all materials that need to be cut at a job site. A common example mentioned is treated lumber, but I don't recall ever having cut treated lumber on a table saw. When I need to cut treated lumber it's with a hand held circular saw. I'm a part-time handyman (some evenings and weekends).
> SawStop technology isn't compatible with all materials that need to be cut at a job site
You can turn the tech off to make it work as a regular table saw, but it does require pre-existing knowledge about what may false-trip the saw. Having a job site saw fail on site without cartridges and blades in supply, or a newbie on the saw could be pretty bad.
Not overly prohibitive with training though, and is something that everyone will face if this becomes mandated.
> I'd be curious to hear the cynical take here.
afaik the patent was basically expiring in the next couple years anyway, even the small ancillary ones. They've been making and selling SawStop saws for the last 20 years and already made their bag. So, since SawStop has the experience designing and building the systems they want to wring out some good will and see which Big Saw manufacturer wants to pay them to get ahead of their competition.
Minor tangent- I view patents and especially physical invention as requiring more work yet patents last 20 years while copyright can last up to 120 years!
https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycl...
Compare the difference in effect between having a copyright on iOS and having a patent on "mobile device with a touchscreen display". In one case you can do a comparable amount of work to make a competitor, in the other competition is entirely prohibited.
Also, copyright terms are ridiculous. Historically patents and copyrights were both 14 years.
How about SawStop open their patent up first? They've already sued to prevent other tool manufacturers from making their own solutions to the problem, because they want theirs to be licensed. So even though they claim they will open their patent once the feature is enforced, what have they done in good faith to make us believe they won't move the goalposts to opening it, once they have captured the market?
Presumably there's a reasonable compromise whereby they provide a public license only valid in areas where such safety mechanisms are legally mandated.
They would be forced to license it under FRAND
SawStop was never against licensing the technology, and from what I'm reading about FRAND, it doesn't force the patent holder to open their patents, only to negotiate in a good faith manner that does not discriminate between licensees, meaning they cannot license the tech to DeWalt for $10/saw and try to make Bosch or Ryobi pay $100 per saw. It doesn't say they are forced to give away their IP for free.
Its extremely unlikely they would offer to open up the patent and then say "haha, fooled you!" once the law takes effect. It would do them more harm than good in the long run to lie to lawmakers & everyone else.
But what if they said “unexpected complications arose” and “the release “got delayed due to a legal situation”?
Easy.
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The patent[0] is over 20 years old so it should have expired regardless - except it got 11 years of extensions. That's a bit of an odd situation because SawStop was selling "patent-pending" saws since the very early 2000's...I'm not sure the extension guidelines were intended to give companies 30 years of exclusivity and protection - it would make more sense in a situation where they couldn't start profiting on the patent until the patent was finally granted. There's a reason they're supposed to be 20 years from "date of file" instead of "date of approval". The current system could encourage companies to try to get their patent applications tied up in appeals for as many decades as possible.
Regardless, it would have made sense for them to agree to FRAND [1] licensing >5 years ago which might have accelerated standards adoption.
From https://toolguyd.com/sawstop-patent-promise/ :
> I am a patent agent and I just took a look at the patent office history of the 9,724,840 patent. It is very interesting because it spent a long time (about 8 years) being appealed in the court system before it was allowed. While patents are provided with a 20 year life from their initial filing date (Mar 13, 2002 for this patent) there are laws that extend the life of the patent to compensate the inventor for delays that took place during prosecution. The patent office initially stated that the patent was entitled to 305 days of Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) and that is what is printed on the face of the patent. But the law also allows for adjustment due to delays in the courts, which the patent office didn’t initially include. So SawStop petitioned to have the delays due to the court appeal added and their petition was granted indicating that it was proper to add those court delays to the PTA. So the PTA was extended to 4044 days, meaning that this patent doesn’t expire until 4/8/2033!
> The other interesting thing about this patent, is that its claims are very broad. Claim 1 basically covers ANY type of saw with a circular blade that stops within 10 ms of detecting contact with a human as long as the stop mechanism is “electronically triggerable.” It would be VERY difficult to work around this patent and meet the CPSC rules. So the fact that SawStop has promised to dedicate this to the public is at least somewhat meaningful.
> BUT, SawStop has many other patents that it has not dedicated to the public. I have not analyzed their overall portfolio, but is is very likely that the other patents create an environment that still makes it difficult to design a saw in compliance with CPSC rules. So it is entirely possible that the dedication of the one broad patent was done to provide PR cover while still not creating a competitive market.
0: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9724840B2/en
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...
This should be the top comment
If I had 3 years to implement a safety feature based on a patent to meet new legal requirements I would be concerned about getting sued for edge cases the patent holder worked out.. Injurues are reduced but buyer beware may no longer apply to the remaining injuries especially if even other new implementations avoid edge case largely by accident, I.e. slightly different materials and other factors not considered when only one manufacturer was attempting the feature.
My cynical take is:
1. Many of SawStop’s patents either expired or about to expire.
2. Bosch already has a similar tech but was prohibited to sell their saws with it in the US. I think soon all the patents that were basis for this ruling going to expire.
3. SawStop already by acquired by TTS(same company that owns Festool). They may have plans to integrate it in their line up somehow and safety tech becomes less of a differentiator.
And my even more cynical take is that FTC only considered requiring safety tech after a nod from the industry leaders.
I saw an alternative to sawstop that would not destroy the blade when it deployes and does not require a replacement gas cartrige.
It appeared to work just as well but I believe it pulls the blade away instead of stopping it.
Sadly I currently can't find it.
Edit: I think it was this one https://www.felder-group.com/en-us/pcs
That really is the crux here.
If the technology is allowed under free-use or a free limited license, that'll change things.
Right now, no one can put it on their saws without having to either risk the patent fight or pay whatever Sawstop wants, with the later probably being so high, there is a reason other brands don't have "Equipped with sawstop technology!" badged on them.
There's some amount of altruism, but no one is cutting their own throats either. At least some corporations are run by humans.
A patent expires, but forcing competitors to adopt a technology you already incorporate raises everyone else's costs, so it's not always bad for business.
I'm amazed that the patent hasn't expired yet. I was sure I heard of this more than 20 years ago.
It's idiotic that health insurance companies aren't clamoring to buy out SawStops and hand-deliver them to everyone with a table saw, asking them to install them at no cost in exchange for an insurance discount.
It's idiotic that health insurance companies don't pay for gym memberships and reduce your premiums if you deliver them screenshots of your workouts and pictures of making healthy food at home.
That's what a sane insurance company that wants to increase profit margins would do. Get out there in the field and reduce the number of times they need to pay.
Insurance profits are capped at a percentage of what they spend, and they sell to a captive market, there's no incentive for them to minimize costs.
Confession: The 3-point seat belt always feels like an eyeroller to me. It's not complicated, and the kind of thing that many others would have come up with soon enough anyway. The real injustice was in classing it as the kind of deep, mind-blowing, hard-won insight that deserves a patent.
> It's not complicated, and the kind of thing that many others would have come up with soon enough anyway.
Counterpoint: a lot of inventions seem obvious in retrospect, especially if you've used them routinely for most of your life. Doesn't mean they were obvious at the time.
Correct. But not this one.
Why must there be a cynical take? Sometimes things really are as great as they seem.