On 9/18/2015 9:40 AM, Mike Marlow wrote:
John McCoy wrote:

Agreed. Unless the court decides SawStop's patents are overly
broad ("a woodworking machine that retracts a cutting tool by
pivoting" is pretty damn broad), and invalidates them completely,
which is possible but not too likely.


That's actually what I've been thinking. I've not really dug into the
patent, and I'm not sure I'm really capable of doing that properly, but I
have long wondered if Gass simply went overly broad in his patent, and that
it would not stand up to a test in court. I guess we'll see...


FWIW what we think the patent is saying and what is determined in the
courts are absolutely not necessarily going to be the same. Flip the coin.

Now while Gass is a patent attorney he was never able to sell lawmakers
on requiring his technology on other brands of saws. So if it is
determined that this is way too important of a safety feature his patent
could be over ruled by a higher entity. Probably unlikely but he might
not get favorable results if he pushes too hard.

The Wright brothers patent did not help them out when WWI came along,
they had to share their technology with Curtis so that the US could
build enough airplanes for the war.
Pretty much the same thing happened with the patent of McCormic's reaper
for harvesting wheat.