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Comment by luma | Hacker News Reader

Stumpy Nubs is a fine woodworker and a great YouTuber, but he, unlike the CEO of SawStop, is not a patent attorney. Over and over in his video he glosses over serious problems with the Saw Stop proposal and presumes goodwill on behalf of SawStop.

That goodwill is not warranted, nothing about Glass' or SawStop's behavior suggests that they're doing anything other than trying to force people to license their product by way of regulation. If they want to claim they are giving the license away, then do the whole patent portfolio (required for a functioning system), not just one of them.

They've already sued their competitors to keep similar products off of the market and there is zero reason for us, the regulators, or the competition to trust this organization.

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>Stumpy Nubs is a fine woodworker and a great YouTuber, but he, unlike the CEO of SawStop, is not a patent attorney.

Gass also has a PhD in physics and was the person who designed and engineered the product.

>If they want to claim they are giving the license away, then do the whole patent portfolio (required for a functioning system), not just one of them.

They want to stay in business. If they give away all of the intellectual property of their entire system, it's likely that they wouldn't be able to for very long.

If they want to require this technology for every device on the market they need to allow other manufacturers to compete in producing it - there is likely a middle ground where only some of their patents would need to be relinquished for competitors to build a product that uses a different specific method but SawStop has an awful lot of patents and has been incredibly litigious in a bad faith manner before.

> in a bad faith manner before.

In a bath faith manner? What's bad faith about it? Enforcing a patent you own isn't bad faith. That's the point of a patent.

This question itself has all the hallmarks of bad faith.

Maybe it's not, but it exhibits all the qualities, so...

You can't claim to desire safety for all while preventing anyone else from increasing safety.

The Bosch system was totally different, sounds superior on several fronts, and SS were only able to stop it by dint of technicalities and plain flaws in the US patent and legal system that allows frankly absurd arguments to win, and most pointedly, SS were willing to do exactly that. Not because Bosch stole anything from them, not because Bosch were sonehow harming users by doing the SS system but not as well as official SS, not because of any justifiable reason except that they physically could.

There is no way to justify SS actions.

Arguing that your technology should be required by law, while offering a performative release of one patent (which is absolutely not enough to cover a working implementation), is the dictionary definition of bad faith. You don't have to go any further than the linked article for evidence of how this guy has acted throughout his entire career.

You're arguing in a circle.

"The reason why he shouldn't be trusted here is because he's done things in bad faith in the past"

"What has he done in bad faith in the past"

Your assertion "He's doing so in bad faith right there".

You can't also attempt to conclude your antecedent from your consequent.

>Gass also has a PhD in physics and was the person who designed and engineered the product.

So what? That doesn't make him NOT an attorney. There's nothing that says a PhD and product inventor can't ALSO be a engaged in a scheme to have their own patent encumbered invention mandated by law.

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