Sad, sad, sad. Greed trumps safety. I wonder how many other safety inventions have not reached mass adoption?
I suppose the R&D on building the components into their current products is something they don't want to do, so maybe that's the greed aspect?
IIRC last time it was discussed here, they were trying to charge ~$100 per saw to license their tech, when the usual margin on a saw was about a quarter of that.
If they just accepted a reasonable licensing fee, their tech would be ubiquitous already and they wouldn't need to try and use regulatory capture to force people to use it.
Relevant quote from TFA:
> CPSC Acting Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle said she was also concerned that the rule might force companies to license technology from SawStop, which she said might create a monopoly.
Now I get the greed aspect, should have been more obvious. I was thinking in terms of component cost and not licensing cost, how naive of me...
Though in this case, at least they did create something novel making the patent legit.
The solution in SawStop qualifies as super obvious to a person not even well versed in art. As such it should not be patentable. However making a patent invalid in the US is extremely hard.
I don't think they are lobbying for saws to use their technology, but rather for saws to use -a- technology to stop the saw.
They just happen to have a patent on a technology with proven results that it works. The patent probably covers the sensing, the stopping of the blade, and reactive retraction system to move the blade downward quickly.
Another manufacturer would have to come up with alternatives to all or more of these to implement the same safety feature; or license the tech from SawStop.
Manufacturers have done the math, and have come to the conclusion that they want the profits over their customer's safety; maybe they also got input from their customers, and found that most wouldn't pay over a certain amount extra for the feature, and that amount was much lower than what R&D for a new method, or licensing SawStop would cost.
So - what's going on can be looked at as either SawStop being greedy, or they really want some kind of this technology to be put on saws (and other tools could benefit likely) - whether it is their's or something else. You can't fault them, though, for pursuing a lawsuit on patent infringement, if the it is being infringed. That's the point of patents.
It could be argued that this is somewhat about greed, though, because SawStop has been pursuing this with the FTC since they came to market with the tech. But I doubt that they are trying "regulatory capture" here - that would be fairly blatant, and I doubt even the current FTC would abide by that. It could turn out, though, that their tech is (so far) the only way to reliably stop a saw blade from spinning instantly.
Ultimately, we'll know what the truth is when the patent runs out:
If all the table saw manufacturers adopt a similar system, but charge only a little extra (but not the huge difference that SawStop does - which is likely a combination of R&D recovery, plus being a small manufacturer with different margins to recoup) - then they care about their customer's safety.
I'm cynical, though - I guess I've lived too long. I expect they'll either adopt something then charge just as much or more as SawStop does currently, or they'll not do anything (but likely increase their prices anyhow).
The trouble as I see it is it's patented technology, and SawStop sues infringers. It would certainly be a jackpot for SawStop to get a law requiring their patented technology on every saw - look what happens to drug prices with patent monopolies. SawStop could easily impose a ruinous patent fee on competitors, and completely monopolize the saw business. Is it any wonder other saw companies oppose this law?
The patents expire in 2021, that should change the game.
Nothing to do with greed.