DIYbanter - View Single Post - Left coast headed towards flesh detecting table saws in 2015

J. Clarke[_2_]

In article ,
says...

Han wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote in
m:

Han wrote:

I believe that in the case where an invention becomes a monopoly,
that the inventor is obliged to license his invention at
"reasonable" cost, not an exorbitant cost. My hyperbolic
statements were meant to emphasize the reasonableness of the fees.
As for taking, there is also eminent domain - much maligned, often
improperly practiced, but such "takings" are allowed by the
Constitution.

Meh!

ALL patents are monopolies, guaranteed by the Constitution.

Article I, Section 8

"The Congress shall have the power... To promote the Progress of
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and
Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries;..."

And? If a law makes use of a patent mandatory, licensing fees shall
be reasonable it says somewhere IIRC. Wasn't that the case with
telephone fees, and a host of other things?

Er, no, not to my knowledge.

It would be impossible, under law, to make a specific product mandatory.
What an entity COULD do is mandate a device (or formula or whatever) that
had specific "charateristics" with clever wording such that only one product
in the world would match the specifications. Actually, this is fairly
common.

Why would it be impossible? Anything that the Congress can be convinced
to enact and the Supreme Court to uphold is "possible, under law". And
both are getting crazy.

In the case of the proposed California law, intelligent people can
come up
with circumventions. For example, assume the retail price of an economy
table saw without "SawStop" is $150 and with "SawStop" is $650. The saw
manufacturer could pack the saw with the SawStop uninstalled, just like the
splitter or stand.

What the buyer of the saw does then is to "sell" the separately-packaged
SawStop back to the saw manufacturer for $500. If that's too obvious, the
buyer could sell the thing to an "independent" third company. What the third
company does with the gizmo is kept a complete mystery (wink-wink).