Comment by reaperman

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...