OJ, I was unaware of that. I look at a lot of trade publications, do you recall where you learned that?
Yeah I was thinking the same and just realized that the SS came to light about 15 years ago. IIRC production began about 8~10 years ago.
Or perhaps Bosch has discovered prior art that would invalidate the patents.
Perhaps but the courtroom is an expensive place to show it off. If they really had something, they'd go to Gass and get a cheap license in trade for burying the prior art. Simply ignoring a patent is a very risky proposition. Bosch may think they can afford it, though.
It's jargon in the IP world. ...as in "one practiced in the art (of designing table saws)". AKA "Technology".
It was posted here a couple of times but I found it in the first couple of hits searching for "SawStop Patent". I was just looking for the numbers. ;-)
The original patents were filed in 1999, so that makes their expiration date 2019. There are other patents but they're not very likely to be difficult to get around.
It occurred to me because Bosch, unlike most others, has money to take such gambles.
That sounds right time wise. There are a ton of patents. There is a long list of them on a label attached to my saw.
Oooooh.
krw wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Prior art is a good point, tho. The Patent Office doesn't look for prior art any longer before issuing a patent (they haven't done for decades), so it's not uncommon for someone to find it and challenge a patent on that ground.
And we don't know what conversations Bosch and SawStop may have had. Perhaps Bosch did go to them with the prior art, and Gass said "you're full of it! That wouldn't hold up in court." And so Bosch decided to find out.
John
They may have a lot of them, but they may be using quantity over quality. Some patents are easily skirted with a minor design change.
There is a lot of speculation in this tread, but unless you read the patents and looked to see if Bosch is the same or different, it is meaningless. Bosch may or may not have infringed, may or may not have done it intentionally, but they probably have deep pockets too.
I know of a company right now that holds a patent that is being infringed upon, has been to court, has had it upheld. He anticipates collecting tons of money, but to date has nothing but tons of lawyer bills. Some of the companies he went after are already out of business for other reasons and will never have a penny to give anyone.
Ed Pawlowski wrote in news:5bKdnfMmtNye8mDInZ2dnUU7- snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
It's meaningless if you have read the patents and looked at the Bosch too. As krw and I have both said (and we've both at least skimmed over the patents), what any of us thinks doesn't matter - it's what a judge and jury think, and they are impossible to predict.
John
Add to the mix the complexity of information and you quickly realize that the jury in most cases isn't comprised of the defendant's "peers."
In this case you're talking about an in depth understanding of electrical and mechanical engineering about which most of the general public are severely ignorant.
The same thing has happened with music copyright cases. There have been cases of blatant, outright plagiarism than anyone with a couple college courses in music could easily decipher in one listen of each song, in which the jury/judge dismissed.
Then you have cases in which a good, persuasive trial attorney performed in court well enough to convince the musically illiterate that one musical artist "stole" another artist's song. In the latter, most musicians would shake their heads and say, "There are only 12 notes on a piano and only so many ways to arrange them, so if you dissect a song enough you'll soon come to the conclusion that there hasn't been an original song written in 500 years."
In both examples, it usually comes down to which lawyers and witnesses the jury members trust more, rather than any real understanding of the facts in the case.
Or as somebody or other put it, "The law is whatever you can convince a judge that it is".
Not usually but there is a chance to show the USPTO prior art before a patent is granted. The point is that the normal way of dealing with this is to go to the patent holder with prior art in hand and negotiate a license. That usually does the trick because once that prior art is out of the bag it's out for everyone. It's in both parties interest to keep it out of court. Courts are expensive, in the best case and can mean the whole Magilla if things don't go so well.
Bosch could have sued to negate the patents, too. This way, they may end up with tripled damages. It's a big risk.
(1) We do not know that Bosch did not try this. In fact I do not believe with know with any certainty that Bosch has not obtained a license from Sawstip.
(2) That it may be "the normal way of dealing with this" does not mean that doing so is mandatory. Why license something for which no license is actually needed?
And this is a bad thing because? Bosch may see invalidating the Sawstop patent as a public service. Remember how Mercedes-Benz handled their antiskid brake patent? They could have done like Gass and demanded huge licensing fees for it, but instead, since they saw it as having a major impact on highway safety, they licensed it to everyone at no charge.
It's true that courts are expensive. However there is a long history of those with deep pockets using this fact to beat the crap out of those with shallower pockets. Last financials I can find show Sawstop with about 6 million in total sales. Bosch has about 16 billion in profits. Bosch is far far more capable of absorbing that expense than is Sawstop.
For certain values of "big". If it amounts to three times Sawstop's total revenues then it's about 0.1 percent of Bosch's profits.
Note that Bosch is privately held--they do not have to explain themselves to shareholders--if they choose to risk a tiny fraction of profits to swat an annoying fly, so be it.
However they should have just bought the bastard, waited until he stuck his hand in the cookie jar, and then fired him for cause. But maybe they tried and he was too stupid to sell. This might be a Ford vs Ferrari situation--Ford tried to buy Ferrari, Enzo told them to sod off, and so Henry wrote the engineers a blank check and told them to beat Ferrari on his own ground, and of course they did.
"J. Clarke" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
There is a suit filed against Bosch by SawStop in the Oregon courts (*). While it's certainly possible for a company to sue another that they have previously licensed, it's uncommon and unlikely to prevail.
John
(* Oregon does not, apparently, beleive in free access to public records, or else I'd quote the details)
Since you put two ideas under one bullet, I'll separate them for you...
1a) We don't know whether they approached SawStop with what they consider prior art but we do know that if they did, it didn't impress SS much. 1b) Yes, we certainly do know that Bosch has not obtained a license from SawStop. If Bosch had obtained a license, SawStop would not have sued them. That makes no sense at all.Again, with the run-on ideas...
2a) Of course it's not mandatory but courts are exceedingly expensive and unreliable. There is a reason things are done the way they are.2b) A license is required if a patent is in force. Their only hope to come out of the situation without major financial losses is to win the court case totally. This is pretty rare since the USPTO is considered the expert on patents, deserved or not.
Do try to follow along. It's not a good thing for SawStop. It's not even a good thing for Bosch, if they can get a license cheap (or free). Patents limit competition, which is in their interest.
If that's the only alternative but only if.
But Gass is not MB, quite obviously.
OK, how much of their corporate profits are going to come from table saws? Are the executives willing to risk the expense of a court trial against the profits generated by one product? How do they pay this cost out of profits of a table saw over five years, especially considering that they're looking at treble damages. Not smart but it appears that's what's afoot.
Look at the risk/reward. The reward for Bosch is miniscule. The risk, large. They are taking on a pretty big risk for a couple of years in the market.
Perhaps but how is SawStop annoying them? Why now? I might agree more if they'd done it fifteen years ago.
Except Ferrari didn't have the patent on the internal combustion engine and wasn't up against the power of the federal government (and Goliath vs. David in courtroom full of technical illiterates.
Smacking self in forehead.
Why, oh why do I go online when I'm having fits of insomnia.
You are of course correct. I claim insomnia, senior moment, insufficient caffeine, or all of the above.
For certain values.
License is not required if patent is not valid. One may go ahead and license the invalid patent rather than attempting to prove that it is nto valid. Bosch has apparently chosen not to do this.
Of course not. Having something bad happen to Sawstop is the whole idea.
You are assuming that you understand their objective.
Only if they see "their interest" in having a partial monopoly on safety saws. Maybe they are more public-spirited than that.
No. But Bosch is a large German company with vast resources, just like Mercedes-Benz. And perhaps they think like Mercedes-Benz.
You are assuming that they care.
Obviously.
Why do they have to pay the costs out of the profits from saws?
What appears to be afoot is someone with vast resources setting out to see if they can beat the crap out of Gass.
I think you grossly underestimate the public relations value of "beat the crap out of that Sawstop asshole and made the technology freely available for everybody".
The risk to Bosch is about the same as the risk to you of having a quarter accidentlly go down the storm sewer while you are flipping it to determine "heads or tails".
It's only a "big risk" if you consider a few million dollars to be a lot of money.
You'd have to ask them. Perhaps it took them this long to come up with something that their lawyers believe has a fair chance of prevailing in court.
No, they were up against the power of Goliath vs David on the racetracks of Europe. And in fact I suspect that Ferrari helds a variety of patents relating to high performance engines. Which were of no relevance since Ford beat them with brute force and awfulness.
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