Home Depot steals saw safety invention & has to pay

[uglystick]

Details about this lawsuit do not help my opinion of Home Depot management:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/ho...ex-680890.html

[JSUPreston]

Makes me even happier to finally be paying off the HD card tomorrow. I owe them about $615, and they were next on my snowball plan anyway. I know Lowe's may be as guilty as HD for doing something similar, but I've been a lot happier with the Lowe's here in Montgomery for quite some time. If this is how HD is going to do business, I can take my money and business elsewhere.

[atgcpaul]

Good for the inventor! I've seen that guard in action. Really simple but still ingenious.

I found this funny:

"This is the kind of activity that people look at that engenders outright disgust for the legal profession," Hurley said. "It is shameful."

The plaintiff's attorneys get $2.8million? I guess that's about 10%. That
doesn't seem right but I suppose without that representation, the inventor
would have nothing.

Edit:

I guess I'm not really angry at lawyers. Just jealous. My wife went to law school, passed the bar, but chooses to work her
gov't job. Selfishly, I want her out there getting the big bucks at a firm so I don't have to.

[eezlock]

Home depot steals saw safety..........

I haven't been happy with Home Despot for a long while, and this just adds
fuel to the fire so to speak for me! About a year ago,Home Despot just decided
to change my credit limit(reduce it) on my commercial charge card for no apparent reason or fault of mine. I had never been late on a payment, exceeded
the charge limitations,asked for a refund, nor questioned an invoice, but "they"
decided to do it anyway! I thought to myself...if this is the way they want to
play the game...to **** with them and their d**n junk! I have been giving my business to a newer, closer and more friendly Lowe's....and have been better
satisfied! I won't and don't plan to buy from them anytime in the future either!

[JimD]

The response to the patent claim seems terribly crude and indefensible. Patents, however, are not an area of the law that is close to black and white. The company I work for has a lot of patents and actively seeks additional patents. But when we find an instance where we need to enforce a patent, we are always cautioned that it may or not be possible and will be expensive to try. I know nothing of the facts of this case but it would not be unusual to see the verdict changed or overturned on appeal. If an executive feels a patent is not an obstacle based upon an opinion from a patent counsel, then he could still be right. He would have expressed himself very poorly but it could actually be possible that the patent owned by the individual is still, in the end, unenforcable. On the other hand, if the HD executive choose to forgo a legal opinion and just do what he wanted - an attitude suggested by the way he expressed himself - then it looks like his employer is likely to pay for the quality of person they hired.

Jim

[vaking]

Looking at it from a different angle. Powell seems to have invented some king of guard for radial arm saw and offered HD to buy license to use it at a price of $2000 per saw and HD has 2000 of such saws. On a technical merit seems a bit too much - I can hardly imagine a guard costing anywhere near that. On the other hand - HD was paying around $1M a year in injury claims related to RAS. After the guard was installed - the cost of claims went to $7K a year. The inventor wanted to charge HD 4 years worth of savings that HD got from the invention. This seems to be in line with existing practice. I would speculate that HD got upset that inventor did not give them volume discount that they normally enjoy from suppliers. When you are buying commodity products - volume discounts usually exist. When this is a specialty item designed for HD - they might not be available.

[Shep]

I like how the article says that HD is thinking about appealing. What's to appeal? An inventor gave you the opportunity to buy a product, you declined, then stole the idea and implemented it anyway. They might have a case about the size of the judgement, but that's still a long shot.

[Kavoom]

My dad knew the guy that invented the pneumatic systems that are used for banks. He patented it, and offered it up with lawyers and got to the point of giving them plans and they backed out and a year later put one virtually identical out there. This was 30 years or so ago. I believe Diebold was the name of the Co. So, he spent 15 years of litigation and two major patent law firms in the U.S. and finally the last one gave up and said yes he was right, but they were giving up (they only got paid if they won.) and he got zip except for 15 years of heartache and a lifetime of regret...

Oh, the United States of Corporate America I pledge allegiance to thee. When Sears was the largest retailer in the U.S. back in the 60's 70's they used to do what Walmart does now, e.g. they bought Campbell Hausfeld air compressors, then Campbell built up infrastructure becoming dependent upon upon the Sears business and then Sears says, we want this price that was essentially cost and Campbell Hausfeld (not a small Co.) sued.

The difference between then and now? Campbell Hausfeld won. Now days? They have given up trying as a couple of big ones lost lawsuits and Walmart just does it and so the companies can't meet the pricing but are completely dependent upon the business and the only way to make a profit is to outsource and shut down American plants. They did it to Levi's as the biggest I can think of... They are working on the pet food companies right now. They offer up shelf space and tell the big Companies that if they meet prices they will get more shelf space and will go to long term agreement later. So, what you have are the companies trying to meet the Walmart demand without building infrastructure knowing that once they do they are stuck and Walmart will dictate pricing and they will have to move out of the U.S. and the companies have to work their plants and employees ragged trying to keep up "hoping" they get the long term agreements and can then with some degree of safety build up. And the "Fancy Feast" is 48 cents at Walmart and 65 to 69 cents everywhere else...

These are large companies scared to death of Walmart but in need of their business. Welcome to our world.

[herb fellows]

Mr. Powell, I salute you! A job well done!

[jussi]

I like how the article says that HD is thinking about appealing. What's to appeal? An inventor gave you the opportunity to buy a product, you declined, then stole the idea and implemented it anyway. They might have a case about the size of the judgement, but that's still a long shot.

Only thing I can think of is the case JimD brings up. That being, whether or not the patent was enforceable or not. Besides when it comes to the judicial system, nothing is ever a slam dunk. Lawyers can talk there way out of anything

[twistsol]

They did it because they thought the could squish the little guy. Good on you mister Powell. By comparison to Menards, however, Home Depot is pretty much ready for sainthood.

[gerti]

Hmmm... To play devils advocate: There was mention of "a simple, yet ingenious, way", and "$2000 each". A real simple device that costs $2000 when produced in a run of 2000? I wonder if that article has the whole story.

[os1kne]

Hmmm... To play devils advocate: There was mention of "a simple, yet ingenious, way", and "$2000 each". A real simple device that costs $2000 when produced in a run of 2000? I wonder if that article has the whole story.

The cost is irrelevant. The guy invented something and offered to sell it to HD. If HD wasn't willing/able to negotiate a deal for a price that both parties were happy with, they could do nothing or buy/develop another solution. Copying / reverse-engineering the product is clearly wrong and they should be punished.

[LCHIEN]

nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
I clearly don't know all the facts but it's possible that HD thought that the patent was very weak or incorrectly awarded. In that case the thing to do is challenge it and see if the owner is going to defend it AND it stands up in court.

Todays patent system for good or bad tends to reward the patent collectors. Companies patent everything (and they are the ones that can afford it at the cost of applying and maintaining the patent) and build portfolios. The patent office is overwhelmed with applications and backlogs dating a couple of years. They are tending to award patents now with minimal critique and then have the court system resolve the important ones that companies choose to challenge on merit.

Companies with large portfolios tend to cross license whole portfolios rather than fight. They'll exchange patent rights plus cash to the one with stronger patents, when they want access to a particular patent that they don't think they can beat in court for a reasonable effort. And instead of a product with an invalided patent they'll have a product with a still valid patent that will be an obstacle for other firms competing.

So I'm not defending HD, I'm saying they might have had good reason to do what they did based on a gamble that the patent might not be held valid. You can never totally predict what a jury might rule. If HD's lawyers had portrayed the guard as just an obvious extension of a blade guard for a miter saw, or produed evidence of one similar to it predating the claimed invention and the jury bought it, they would have saved $4M - worth it if they thought they had a 50-50 chance. It's also testing the patent holder by challenging him to defend the patent, as to how strong a case he thinks he has. BY demanding $2000 apiece for a simple device, he may be bluffing, by making him go to court you are calling his raise (poker terms).

[pelligrini]

I thought this got brought up here in a sawstop related thread, but I couldn't find it.

I do remember some news about HD inspecting and measuring Powell's device. I found a little bit in this news story: http://www.bizjournals.com/southflor...0/daily30.html
"A key piece of evidence was a photo of a former Home Depot executive carrying tape measures, pencils and pads, and examining one of Powell’s prototypes that had been installed at a Georgia store."