Comment by gorkish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorkish | Hacker News Reader

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I'll forever remain skeptical of SawStop. I understand their mechanism works quite well and they sell a very high quality saw, but I will never in my life buy it.

It's amazing how the discourse online has shifted. SawStop's original focus after having their patent granted was super-litigious IP-troll type behavior. They were able to win some cases and force other manufactures like Bosch to remove alternative safety they had engineered to compete. SawStop was lobbying heavily for a regulatory requirement to mandate their patented technology be installed on all table saws.

The online opinion of them was ... not good. Look up the old SawStop stuff on Slashdot if you want to see it.

Now that their patent is about to expire, it's "oh look we have changed" -- they haven't. It's just a desperate bid to get themselves insinuated in front of manufacturers who will be suddenly charged with a mandate to ship safety devices -- and of course SawStop will be there with the business shortcut. Sorry, no. Fuck them. Let the patent expire.

Since they actually make a product using their patented technology, they would definitionally not be a patent troll. Even if they’re litigious, that’s exactly how the system is supposed to work when you’ve invented a valuable technology which you sell to recoup the costs of R&D plus the profit of your invention.

> Since they actually make a product

At the time they were up to their original shenanigans they did not sell the saw. They did not sell a saw for the first five years of their business being open. It was a pure IP play. God damn do people have short memories.

Maybe that's a reasonable timeframe to go from patent to selling it? I imagine there's a few things that can go between those, like tests on the patented prototype, designing how it'll be mass produced, mass producing it, distribution & storage, etc.

No. Their original saw was derived from a design that their OEM was already producing. All of this was well documented and well covered by various outlets at the time including Slashdot and Groklaw; please stop with the absurd speculation. SawStop was an IP troll. Whether they still are or not, I do not know, but the current situation sure smells funny. I am not at all convinced that their efforts to invite regulation is altruistic *even if* it actually improves saw safety.

Color me jaded, but isn't this just business as usual in the U.S?

Color me jaded, but isn't this just a typical dig on the US that also applies to businesses acting predictably in their best interests the world over?

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