Comment by traviswt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by traviswt | Hacker News Reader

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If you go listen to their CEO's testimony, he clearly states that the one single original patent behind the idea is now open but was expiring anyway. He brags about them spending a lot of money on R&D and needing to recoup that, reiterating that they have many other patents that aren't being opened that cover the exact implementation. He talked about them exploring those other methods, choosing not to patent them, and only patenting the best solution.

All his words. He's trying to explain that sure, the patent is open, but companies are still going to have to work harder than Sawstop because they have many more patents they refuse to open that cover the best and most logical implementation of this idea.

You're asking for a "cynical" take, but it's not really cynical! The CEO is trying to tell everyone, openly, and they're not listening. They are NOT altruistic, otherwise they would have opened the entire suite of patents. They are openly saying this singular patent is open, because it doesn't matter and that they will doggedly defend their other patents. Now, every other manufacturer will now need to navigate a minefield of patent litigation, and follow the path of subpar implementations that Sawstop ruled out during their R&D.

I don't know why everyone is ignoring his testimony and thinking the company is giving anything up, it's wild!

If there is a mandate, then they have to license the patents under FRAND terms.

Interesting, didn’t know about that aspect of US law. Don’t see any reason to delay an implementation then.

FRAND terms which will be buried in litigation for the next 20 years.

Why not just set the mandate to begin after most of these patents expire? I would really not brush off how serious of a safety problem this is, but honestly I’d rather the government either delay the implementation or buy out the patents because this is a blatant market failure of public interest that the government is well poised to address. Digit amputation incurs a public cost even in America.

Patents are already a government manipulation of markets. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been a market failure if there were never any patents around it.

> they have many more patents

How does that work though?

If the patent covers something that was already in the first version of the device, it should be either patented before 2004 and thus expired, or patented afterwards and thus invalid due to prior art, no?

Consider patent 223,898 and then consider patent 239,153 and 425,761 and pay attention to the initial wording ( https://www.thomasedison.org/edison-patents )

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2104.html

> 35 U.S.C. 101 Inventions patentable.

> Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2103.html

> 35 U.S.C. 101 has been interpreted as imposing four requirements: (i) only one patent may be obtained for an invention; (ii) the inventor(s) must be identified in an application filed on or after September 16, 2012 or must be the applicant in applications filed before September 16, 2012; (iii) the claimed invention must be eligible for patenting; and (iv) the claimed invention must be useful (have utility).

The prior art requirement isn't "there exists nothing like this before" but rather "this invention hasn't been listed before".

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2120.html

> A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.

> The prior art requirement isn't "there exists nothing like this before" but rather "this invention hasn't been listed before".

Wow. So this is how "evergreening" works? You patent enough of it that nobody can replicate it, but not everything, then every couple of years you patent one more non-obvious detail even though it's already included in v1?

I always thought patenting has to happen before first public use. I wonder if that's different in Europe.

Kind of, not really though. You can't patent the same thing again.

> 35 U.S.C. 101 has been interpreted as imposing four requirements: (i) only one patent may be obtained for an invention;

You need to improve upon it and have a new claim.

If I was to patent A and make it, and then patent B which improves upon A at some point in the future, when A's patent expires someone else can make A and if they show that they're making A and not B, there's nothing I can do about it.

The issue is that often B is better than A (why make a 223,898 light bulb when you can make a 425,761 light bulb?) so while you could make A, its not commercially viable to do so.

The thing is that I've got a research line looking at making improvements on B and patenting C later which is a further improvement on B. The investment of time, knowledge, and resources to be able to do refinements of A to make B, C, and later D - that's where it's hard to get into it.

Someone else could improve on A to make B' and if it was different than how I did B, they could patent that. Though in the real world, this often involves in hiring away people who are familiar with A and investing a lot of time / money into making a B' that might get interpreted by the courts as too similar to B.

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