Despite Proven Technology, Attempts to Make Table Saws Safer Drag On

Re:Despite Proven Technology, Attempts to Make Table Saws Sa... by nsnick on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @12:15PM (#15028675)

Didn't sawstop offer to license the technology for something like 8%? It doesn't seem that unreasonable to get a license. I would agree with you if sawstop was trying to prevent anyone from selling a safety saw, but I don't think that is the case.

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Re:Despite Proven Technology, Attempts to Make Table Saws Sa... by Bartweiss on Thursday August 17, 2017 @11:45AM (#15037787)

8% is egregious. Margins on consumer goods after parts and production are often well under 5%. Complex durable goods are probably higher, but even so 8% completely redefines the entire market.

Look at it this way: Bosch decided it was better to spend a small fortune of R&D to try to avoid the patent than to pay the license fees. And even now they haven't settled the resulting lawsuit - they'd rather fight it, because the likely outcome of the fee is not "paying up" but "scrapping the entire product line as a net loss".

Also bear in mind that this technology is a major portion of the total price of a saw - up around 50% on cheaper saws. So it's going to massively increase prices, and also increase SawStop's margins. They didn't just ask for 8%, they asked for 8% while lobbying the government to increase the price they're taking margin on and ban smaller competitors.

This looks like the other form of patent abuse - where instead of trolling you make a product people can't avoid and crush competitors with patent suits.

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Re:Despite Proven Technology, Attempts to Make Table Saws Sa... by mohaine on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @03:02PM (#15030170)

8% of revenue is HUGE. It would probably be the single biggest expense for each saw.

It also seems strange for that to be a percent instead of a fixed cost since the feature is the same for all models of a saw.

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