Saw Stop

[jussi]

I'd expect someone that invented a way to extend gas mileage of an automobile by 50% to want more than 5-7%, while someone that has invented a way to electronically determine tire inflation (lighting a signal on the dash) may settle for much less?

But I don't really think you can compare table saws and cars. The profit margin for one is much much more, since a large percentage of the population owns cars. The same can't be said for table saws. If Ford was the first invent that technology they would have a huge spike in consumers. If say Grizzly agreed to pay his price would there that huge of a spike to offset the royalties. After all how many serious woodworkers are there that would spend the money.

[cgallery]

It does depend a bit on the circumstances, but 15% of the wholesale price, let alone the retail price, is tough for any manufacturer to swallow, especially if the invention doesn't provide a sustainable competitive advantage.

You might be right, 15% may have been too much for Grizzly to absorb after adding the SS technology to a current model (which probably wouldn't be cheap, either).

But my point was more about the "standard 5-7% royalty" statement. It seems like an argument that lends itself to comparing apples and oranges. How can you make statements like that when each patent you'd use would be pretty much unique and not necessarily lend itself to comparisons to previous agreements?

[cgallery]

...After all how many serious woodworkers are there that would spend the money.

Well, it seems SawStop isn't having any problems selling their saws at $3800. The standard Grizzly cabinet saw is $1200. Adding $500 in machining costs and materials to add SS technology, and another 15% on top for royalties, would bring a Grizzly w/ SS technology to $1955. Could they sell enough to make it worth their while? I honestly don't know the answer to that question.

BUT, my point isn't to argue whether the decision made financial sense for Grizzly, or not. But rather to point out that referring to 5-7% standards seems odd. How do you compare the value-added of SawStop technology, for example, to the value-added of a unique mobile base?

[LCHIEN]

i finally decide to put in my 2 cents worth.

This guy Gass is a patent lawyer and a woodworker and figured out a way to make a working saw safety device. He has filed a large number of patents covering every aspect of the saw stop and seems to have got the technology and some possible variants of it locked up pretty well from what I read although I have not read his alleged 50 patents covering the field.

Lets assume this works properly as advertised.

The purpose of a patent is to give the inventor a monopoly for 17 years in order to reap the benefits of his inventing. This is a well accepted practice for many years and all over the world, in order to encourage invention for the betterment of mankind. It's even recommended in our constitution. If we took inventions away from inventors, then there would be a drop in inventions.

I consider the saw stop technology to be barely an invention. The law requires that to obtain a patent the invention must be new and unobvious. The use of body capacitance to trigger switches (e.g. touch switches) has been known and used for many years. Jamming a metal wedge into a spinning wheel with teeth is an obvious way to stop it. A main part of the invention is the cartridge triggered fast enough to stop it in the short time.

Interestingly the air bag was invented and patented in the 50's. However the inventor never reaped the benefits because he was too early, the accelerometers were too expensive and there was no known way of expanding the bag fast enough.
It took more inventions in following years (1980's I think) before the bag became a producible item.

there are a number of ways an inventor can take advantage of a patent. One is to produce goods with the invention and sell them for profit, a higher sales price can be obtained if the invention makes the product more desirable from safety, appearancee, simplicity, durability, etc. the other way is to licence the patent to makes of devices that would benefit in the same way from incorporation.

We know Gass first tried to license the invention but was asking royalties as large as 15% of the wholesale price and later fropped it to 7 or 8%. For a saw maker who made $1000 cabinet saws (w/o sawstop) it might add $200 for the cost for materials and another 70-80 for the royalties. Sales of the cartridge mechanism which might be proprietary would add to saw stops revenue. So the $1000 saw might now cost closer to $1300. Cheap benchtop saws costing $150 would have lower royalties but the materials might be similar and end up selling for $375.

So you can see how pricing of sawstops might push cheap saws out of the range of the people who need it the most (inexperienced, first time saw buyers).

Another concern for other sawmakers is exactly what happened... Saw Stop went into the saw business. In this case, sawmakers paying royalties and having to pay marked-up prices for cartridges would be competing with saws that did not have royalties and got the cartridges with no mark-up.

The free market alternatives for the saw companies are to come up with alternatives that circumvent the patent's listed claims even though those techniques may be more expensive and have some possible shortcomings. They can also fight the patents. Increasingly the government has taken to issuing patents rather than spending the time and effort to analyze them thoroughly, and then letting competing companies challenge those that are weak or undeserved, essentially letting businesses sort out the important patents and find the weak points.

In Gasses case, he has wrapped up the patent coverage pretty well. Patents are not cheap, its extimated that it takes a minimum of $10,000 to file for and receive a patent, although hes a patent lawyer and did most of the writing and filing, he still has fees and used his valuable time; 50 patents would be worth half a million in fees and lawyer time.

The saw companies are also at fault. The safety problem has existed for years. As leaders in their field they should have had ongoing R&D projects to find and patent methods, but they failed to do so. They let Gass round up all the possible variations of patent claims.

The economic benefit of an invention has to help sell it. Some 3000 digits are claimed to be lost every year to saws. That sounds high... maybe its right. Whats the economic impact and how much per saw lifetime are we talking about? very hard number to quantify. Making an assumption that the loss divided by the number of saws on a yearly basis comes out to $100 per saw, then a $300 addition to the cost of a saw is not going to sell widely.

As for getting lobbiesst to try and get the CPSC to mandate something simlar to his invention for all saws, he is within his rights, just as it is legal and encouraged by our patent system to try and use his state-granted monopoly.

So is Gass a greedy ******* or a clever engineer and lawyer? Is he a saviour or a devil in disguise who would make our saws too expensive? Is he a man who saw an opportunity and had a good idea but just made a mistake and priced it too high?
A leftist who would have mandatory health insurance or one who would force unwanted medicines on us?

I really don't think I can make a decision on it, I guess the marketplace will decide.
P.S. I am named as inventor on 9 US patents.

[LCHIEN]

Here's a list of the patents on saw safety I found for Mr. Gass
PAT. NO. Title
1 7,421,315 Detection system for power equipment
2 7,377,199 Contact detection system for power equipment
3 7,359,174 Motion detecting system for use in a safety system for power equipment
4 7,357,056 Cutting tool safety system
5 7,353,737 Miter saw with improved safety system
6 7,350,445 Brake cartridge for power equipment
7 7,350,444 Table saw with improved safety system
8 7,347,131 Miter saw with improved safety system
9 7,328,752 Power tools
10 7,308,843 Spring-biased brake mechanism for power equipment
11 7,290,472 Miter saw with improved safety system
12 7,284,467 Apparatus and method for detecting dangerous conditions in power equipment
13 7,231,856 Apparatus and method for detecting dangerous conditions in power equipment
14 7,228,772 Brake positioning system
15 7,225,712 Motion detecting system for use in a safety system for power equipment
16 7,210,383 Detection system for power equipment
17 7,197,969 Logic control with test mode for fast-acting safety system
18 7,171,879 Discrete proximity detection system
19 7,137,326 Translation stop for use in power equipment
20 7,121,358 Power tools
21 7,100,483 Firing subsystem for use in a fast-acting safety system
22 7,098,800 Retraction system and motor position for use with safety systems for power equipment
23 7,093,668 Power tools
24 7,077,039 Detection system for power equipment
25 7,055,417 Safety system for power equipment
26 7,024,975 Brake mechanism for power equipment
27 7,000,514 Safety systems for band saws
28 6,997,090 Safety systems for power equipment
29 6,994,004 Table saw with improved safety system
30 6,957,601 Translation stop for use in power equipment
31 6,945,149 Actuators for use in fast-acting safety systems
32 6,945,148 Miter saw with improved safety system
33 6,920,814 Cutting tool safety system
34 6,880,440 Miter saw with improved safety system
35 6,877,410 Miter saw with improved safety system
36 6,857,345 Brake positioning system
37 6,834,730 Power tools
38 6,826,988 Miter saw with improved safety system
39 6,813,983 Power saw with improved safety system
40 6,536,536 Power tools