[Commons-Law] Inventions - a matter of choice

[Sunita Sreedharan]

Hello Hasit,

You are right.  Inventions do not necessarily transform the system.  It 
takes a marketing strategy to get the industry to endorse an invention.

And when the invention edges on a breakthrough, chances are that it may well 
be used more to cut competition within the industry than in genuine social 
interest.  The classic demand-and-supply, or creating a niche market 
situations then take a back seat.

The bottomline here is whether the inventor gets any recognition.  It is the 
patent system, which recognizes the inventor, and gives him the option to 
license his patent or to place it in the public domain.  The Patent system 
offers the inventor a choice.

Unless you own something, you have nothing to give away - even in charity!

Sunita K. Sreedharan
Partner - Life Sciences & GI
Anand and Anand
New Delhi


From: commons-law-request at sarai.net
Reply-To: commons-law at sarai.net
To: commons-law at sarai.net
Subject: commons-law Digest, Vol 31, Issue 3
Date: Mon,  6 Feb 2006 12:00:11 +0100 (CET)

Send commons-law mailing list submissions to
	commons-law at sarai.net

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	commons-law-request at sarai.net

You can reach the person managing the list at
	commons-law-owner at sarai.net

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of commons-law digest..."


Today's Topics:

    1. He Took On the Whole Power-Tool Industry - Why wasn't	anyone
       else interested in building a safer saw? (Hasit seth)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 10:50:27 +0530
From: Hasit seth <hbs.law at gmail.com>
Subject: [Commons-Law] He Took On the Whole Power-Tool Industry - Why
	wasn't	anyone else interested in building a safer saw?
To: commons-law at sarai.net
Message-ID:
	<8b60429e0602052120s756a40a9qcd6ac0e699a5e7e5 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

Hi,

    This should be mandatory reading for all anti-patent activitists to
sensitize them to how business, invention and society function when
they interact (rather collide).  Issues to note are:

1. Inventions, and disruptive inventions in particular, can happen
anytime. Nothing is invented for once and all. There is room for
improvement all the time.

2. Not everyone who invents can get the invention to market.
Particularly, when the invention improves an exisiting device or
product.

3. If you squeeze the patent/invention pipeline by variety of
socialist devices, there will be not much incentive left to invent.
In short, keep ideology away from invention.

4. It is a complex process from invention to a marketable product. It
doesn't always happen in a textbook style approach. Hence, a long time
period for patent validity provides room for negotiations/improvements
of different kind.

Regards,
Hasit
===============================
He Took On the Whole Power-Tool Industry
?
From: Inc. Magazine, July 2005 |  Page  By: Melba Newsome Photographs
by: Robbie McClaran
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In February 2001, Stephen Gass strode to the podium in a conference
room at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and began the video presentation
for SawStop, his new invention. The 75 attendees watched the screen
closely as a woodworker fed a sheet of plywood into a power-saw blade
spinning at 4,000 rpm. Then a hot dog was placed in the path of the
blade. Miraculously, the instant the blade made contact with the
wiener, the saw shut down and the blade retracted. The dog escaped
with only a small nick -- substitute a finger and it's the difference
between a cut and an amputation.

Gass had given the same dog-and-pony show a dozen times, mostly for
woodworkers, contractors, and a few industry executives. But this
audience was different. It consisted of lawyers for the Defense
Research Industry, a trade group for attorneys representing the
power-tool industry. SawStop could help prevent thousands of serious
injuries caused by power tools each year, Gass believed -- if the
industry would license it. He returned to his seat thinking he had
made his case.

Then Dan Lanier, national coordinating counsel for Black & Decker,
stepped to the podium. His topic: "Evidentiary Issues Relating to
SawStop Technology for Power Saws." Lanier spent the next 30 minutes
discussing a hypothetical lawsuit -- in which a plaintiff suing a
power-saw manufacturer contended the saw was defective because it did
not incorporate SawStop's technology -- and suggesting ways defense
counsel might respond. Lanier recalls it as a rather dry exploration
of legal issues. Gass heard something different. To his ears, Lanier's
message was this: If we all stick together and don't license this
product, the industry can argue that everybody rejected it so it
obviously wasn't viable, thereby limiting any legal liability the
industry might face as a result of the new technology. (Lanier denies
this was his point.)

Gass was stunned. His tiny start-up, run by three guys out of a barn
in Wilsonville, Oreg., had captured the attention of the entire
power-tool industry. For months, he had been negotiating with major
players such as Ryobi, Delta, Black & Decker, Emerson, and Craftsman
about licensing his invention. Instead, they seemed intent on trying
to make him and his product go away.

Some 32,000 Americans are rushed to emergency rooms with
table-saw-related injuries each year, according to the Consumer
Product Safety Commission; more than 3,000 of those visits result in
amputations, usually of fingers or hands. The medical bill to reattach
a severed finger runs from about $10,000 for a clean wound to more
than $25,000 if there's nerve damage, infection, or other
complications, according to James W. Greer, president of the
Association of Property and Casualty Claims Professionals, a trade
group in Tampa. Factor in rehabilitation and lost time at work, and
the cost per injury can easily reach six figures. Indeed, in 2002, the
CPSC estimated the annual economic cost of table-saw injuries to be $2
billion. That's more than 10 times the size of the entire $175 million
table-saw market. Clearly, this is an industry that could use a better
mousetrap.

That's what Gass figured he had in the summer of 2000, when SawStop's
technology made its debut. A year later, the Consumer Products Safety
Commission awarded the device its Chairman's Commendation for product
safety. Popular Science magazine named it one of 100 Best New
Innovations. Tool industry bigwigs seemed impressed too. "It is
probably one of the most major developments in the area of product
safety applicable for table saws," said Peter Domeny, director of
product safety for S-B Power Tool, which makes Skil and Bosch tools.

So, four years later, why isn't SawStop on every table saw on the
market? That's the funny thing about better mousetraps. Build one, and
the other mousetrap makers will probably hate your guts. They might
even try to squeeze you out of the mousetrap business altogether. Just
ask the inventors of air bags, safer cigarette lighters, and automatic
shutoffs for electrical appliances -- all of which encountered
resistance from the status quo. Ultimately they prevailed and their
innovations became standard. Gass still has a long way to go.

Gass didn't set out to take on the power-tool industry. Nor did he
ever see himself as an entrepreneur. The amateur woodworker was
standing in his workshop one day in 1999, staring at his idle table
saw. "The idea came to me that it might be possible to stop the blade
quickly enough to avoid serious injury," he says. A patent attorney
who also holds a doctorate in physics, Gass loves nothing more than
solving complex technical problems. He got out pencil, paper, and
calculator and got to work.

Stopping the blade, he figured, would require a two-part process.
First, he needed a brake that would work quickly enough when it came
into contact with a woodworker's hand. Next, he had to design a
triggering system that could differentiate between finger and wood.
Given the speed of the blade, it would have to stop in about 1/100 of
a second -- or at about an eighth of an inch of rotation after making
contact. Any further, and the cut would be so deep that the device
would be useless. To stop the blade this quickly would require about
1,000 pounds of force to decelerate the blade in 10 milliseconds. That
calculation took Gass about 30 minutes. The trigger problem was a
little more complicated, but Gass came up with the idea of running a
small electrical charge through the blade. The system would sense when
the blade hit flesh because the body would absorb some of the charge.
The resulting drop in voltage would be enough to trigger the brake and
stop the blade almost instantly.

Gass spent two weeks designing the technology and, using a $200
secondhand table saw, an additional week building a prototype. Then he
began to experiment. With the blade whirring, he touched his hand to
its smooth side. It stopped immediately. The same thing happened when
he ran a hot dog into the blade's teeth. Gass repeated the experiment
dozens of times -- and each time the blade stopped immediately.
Convinced his invention would be embraced by the industry, he
videotaped a demonstration, registered the patent, and set out to
convince manufacturers to license the technology, which he had dubbed
SawStop. He sent a video demo to Delta Machinery in Jackson, Tenn.,
one of the largest table-saw manufacturers, and waited.

Gass was pleased with his results, but he also knew there was
something else to be done: He had to test SawStop on a real finger.
"There's not a lot of demand for a saw that's safe for hot dogs," he
says with a laugh. And so, on a spring afternoon in 2000, Gass stood
in his workshop and tried to summon the moxie to stick his left ring
finger into the teeth of a whirring saw blade. He had rubbed the digit
with Novocain cream, hoping to dull the pain of the cut. On the first
try, his heart beating furiously, he eased in close but recoiled
before making contact. A few minutes later, he tried again. This time,
he rolled his finger close enough to get a faint red mark, but
panicked and pulled back before the brake triggered. By now, his
forearm was cramping from the tension. It was difficult to keep his
hand steady. Still, on his third attempt, he kept his nerve -- and the
blade stopped, just as he knew it would. "It hurt like the dickens and
bled a lot," he says. But the finger remained intact.

Several months later, Gass finally heard back from Delta. "No, thanks.
Safety doesn't sell," he says he was told over the phone. (Delta, now
known as Delta Porter Cable, is now owned by Black & Decker. A Delta
spokesperson who asked not to be identified denies that a Delta
employee made the comment.) Gass could not believe his ears.
"Everybody in woodworking knows somebody who's lost a finger or had an
accident," he says. How could a major manufacturer not be interested?

"These guys would walk up to us and say, 'I wanna shake your hand.' A
lot of them were shaking with two or three fingers missing."
Gass refused to give up. Working with three other lawyers from his
Portland law firm, David Fanning, David Fulmer, and David D'asenzo, he
raised $150,000, built a more sophisticated prototype, and signed up
for the International Woodworking Fair in August 2000 in Atlanta. The
reaction there was phenomenal. SawStop's booth was packed with
spectators who stood riveted as Gass and his partners fed wiener after
wiener into the table saw. "Afterward, these guys would walk up to us
and say, 'I wanna shake your hand for doing this,'" recalls Fanning.
"A lot of them were shaking with two or three fingers missing." It was
all the validation the four men needed. A month later, Gass and
Fanning walked away from law partnerships to pursue SawStop full-time.
Fulmer, an associate at the firm, followed a few months later.
D'asenzo invested in the venture but kept his day job.

The fall of 2000 was hardly an auspicious time to launch a start-up.
The Internet boom had just gone bust, the Nasdaq was in free fall, and
investors were gun-shy. Yet SawStop was so practical and easy to
understand, the trio had little trouble raising $1.2 million in angel
funding from several different investors. They invested in more R&D,
better prototypes, and small salaries for the three principals. "It
was a no-brainer," says Grant Simmons, a New Orleans urologist who
invested an undisclosed amount in SawStop after reading about the
company and seeing a video demonstration in 2004. It was Simmons's
first experience as an angel investor, and his interest was more than
just financial: His father was a lifelong woodworker who had lost a
finger in a table-saw accident. "This is revolutionary," Simmons says.
"They are applying basic physics in a practical way to address a very
important issue that people in the industry have totally ignored --
safety." Gass, Fanning, and Fulmer, meanwhile, filed more than 50
patent applications to protect their invention.

The only thing they lacked was industry cooperation -- but that seemed
inevitable. After all, they believed, common sense and consumer demand
ultimately would win out. What's more, the technology had implications
far beyond table saws. It could potentially boost the safety of all
power saws, including band saws and circular saws, as well as nail
guns, lawn mowers, and other products. For the next two years, the
partners engaged in what seemed to be promising talks with high-level
executives at Emerson, Black & Decker, and Ryobi. In January 2002,
they appeared to have turned the corner when Ryobi agreed to license
SawStop's technology. Under the terms of the deal, there would be no
up-front fee; Ryobi would pay a 3% royalty based on the wholesale
price of all saws sold with SawStop's technology. The number would
increase to 8% if the majority of the industry also licensed the
technology. It was not a get-rich-quick deal, but Gass believed it was
a vital first step.

When the contract arrived, Gass noticed a typo and called Ryobi's
attorney, Bob Bugos, to make the correction. Gass says Bugos
apologized and promised to take care of it right away. (Ryobi
representatives declined to comment for this story.) When a week
passed and the revised contract still had not arrived, Gass called
back. He says Bugos was very apologetic and assured him the contract
was on its way. Again, it didn't come. Gass says he called every two
weeks and each time Bugos made the same promise. After about six
months of going back and forth, it finally dawned on Gass that the
Ryobi deal, like all the others, was going nowhere.

Indeed, the major power-tool manufacturers have professed to be
somewhat less than impressed with SawStop. "The device has not been
field-tested for results, durability, and reliability," said a
representative from Delta Porter Cable. "It's an experimental system,
not yet field-proven." According to Dan Lanier, the Defense Research
Industry attorney, all of the manufacturers approached by Gass
independently tested and evaluated the technology. And each one,
Lanier said in an e-mail, encountered "significant problems." "The
primary problem," he said, "was an unacceptably high rate of false
trips of the braking device when cutting wet, green, or
pressure-treated lumber." The industry, Lanier added, is also wary of
the fact that even when the device works, the user still walks away
with an injury. "Manufacturers discovered that, depending on the
accident scenario and the type of blade used, a user even with a
properly functioning SawStop-equipped table saw still could sustain a
very severe injury," Lanier said. "Mr. Gass's hot dog demonstration
simply is not representative of the way in which many table-saw
accidents occur." Given those issues, manufacturers also felt that the
8% royalty sought by Gass was "exorbitant and unreasonable," Lanier
said. (Representatives from Ryobi, S-B Power Tool, WHM Tool Group, and
Emerson did not return repeated calls seeking comment.)

Gass counters that the industry tests were conducted on unrefined
prototypes -- models essentially built to demonstrate that the concept
worked -- and that many of the problems Lanier cites have since been
addressed. On current models, most wood needs to dry for only an hour
or two before being cut, he says. As for the fact that SawStop can
result in an injury even when it works, Gass asks the following
question: Isn't it better to walk away with a cut, even a deep one,
than to lose a finger or a hand? "I think they were looking for
reasons not to implement it," he says.

Gass sees the objections as a smoke screen for the industry's real
concern: the increased risk of product-liability litigation. In most
cases, when people sue power-tool manufacturers because they've lost a
finger or hand in an accident, they're unsuccessful -- because it's
tough to prove that the manufacturer did anything wrong. Add SawStop
to the mix, however, and the picture changes. Suddenly, the industry
is promising an injury-proof saw. What if someone got hurt? "The
manufacturer would be at a deeper risk and more vulnerable because it
had made a promise of what the technology could do," says Jim
O'Reilley, a product-liability expert at the University of Cincinnati.
"Companies are going to be reluctant to expose themselves to that
higher risk."

Indeed, precisely who would assume that risk turned out to be a major
sticking point in SawStop's licensing negotiations. The manufacturers
believed Gass should indemnify them against any lawsuit if SawStop
malfunctioned. Gass, however, says that he could not possibly make
such a guarantee since he would not actually be manufacturing the
saws. And there is another facet to the liability issue. If SawStop
did come to market and was proved effective in preventing accidents,
it might be easier for plaintiffs to win lawsuits against
manufacturers of traditional saws, because juries might be more likely
to return a verdict against a manufacturer that chose not to implement
SawStop. That's the main reason, Gass believes, that the big tool
makers are refusing to deal with him. They want his product to go
away.

After the deal with Ryobi fell apart in mid-2002, Gass, Fanning, and
Fulmer faced a tough choice: Abandon the company and return to
practicing law or build the saws themselves. None of the men had ever
run a company, but they all understood that it's one thing to be an
inventor and another to be an entrepreneur. They would be responsible
for designing, manufacturing, marketing, and sales along with the
day-to-day operations of a business. It was a tough prospect -- but
not a tough decision. All three agreed that if they didn't act, their
technology would never see the light of day. "It seemed like the right
thing to do," says Fanning. "There aren't very many opportunities to
make money and do something good."

With wives and kids to support, Gass and his partners have found that
the decision has not always been easy to stand by. Gass fondly recalls
the six-figure salary he earned as a patent lawyer. At one point, he
was so close to returning to his legal career that he got quotes for
renewing the legal-malpractice insurance policy he dropped when he
devoted himself to SawStop. "I never doubted my invention or wanted to
give up, but I've wondered if we would be able to keep going," he
says. "It's been touch-and-go several times with money, and we always
manage to pull through at the last minute."

SawStop now operates with eight people out of a two-story barn Gass
built himself. Filled with electronics, high-tech machinery, and every
tool imaginable, the first floor is a handyman's paradise. In the
corner is a large stack of woodworking timber left untouched since
Gass launched his venture. Gass logs 12- to 14-hour days running the
business upstairs. Desks, computers, and filing cabinets fill the
second-floor office space. A map of the United States hangs above the
conference table. It's dotted with colored pushpins, each one
representing a city where someone has purchased a SawStop table saw.

The first one rolled off the assembly line of a Taiwanese
manufacturing plant in November 2004. SawStop has since sold about 600
and has 300 more on back order. A basic contractor saw retails for
$799; the professional-level cabinet saw goes for $2,500. The company
relies on trade shows, news stories, word of mouth, and ads in
woodworking magazines for marketing. Selling online and
direct-to-consumer is an acceptable way to get started, but Gass knows
that to reach the larger market he will need to get into home
improvement stores, where competition for shelf space is fierce. He's
had discussions with Home Depot and Lowe's, but neither has committed
to carrying the product.

"Accidents are usually caused by human error, but this saw grants you
forgiveness," says one contractor.
So for now, Gass is banking on people like Sharon and Don Biers,
owners of Collins Custom Cabinets. After one of the employees at their
Lowell, Ark., shop lost a finger in a power-saw accident in February,
the Biers bought a $2,500 SawStop cabinet saw and have since ordered
two more. It didn't take long for the purchase to pay off. Within two
weeks, another employee, John Stroud, inadvertently shifted his hand
into the path of the blade and the saw shut down when it hit his
fingernail. "We made the calculation that it's worth it for the safety
of our guys," says Sharon Biers. "The accidents are usually caused by
human error, but this saw grants you forgiveness." And not just for
professionals. In May, Gass received an e-mail from a high school shop
teacher in Princeton, Wis. "I have a sophomore who still has two
thumbs thanks to your saw," the man wrote. The company knows of at
least five other amputations that have been averted.

With the big tool companies declining to participate, SawStop is
seeking other ways to make sure its technology is adopted. In April
2003, the company filed a petition with the Consumer Product Safety
Commission to make SawStop-like technology standard on all table saws.
Six months later, the Power Tool Institute, a consortium of 17
power-tool makers, filed an opposing brief in which it argued that
SawStop is a "speculative and untested technology. In addition, the
cost to consumers and manufacturers of granting the petition would far
outweigh any benefits that may be realized." The industry also claims
to be developing its own safety systems. The CPSC is expected to
release its findings this summer. If it states, as Gass hopes and
expects, that the technology is effective, it will be the first step
in a long process of making SawStop -- or a similar injury-prevention
system -- mandatory.

Meanwhile, the industry's product-liability fears appear to be coming
to life. In 2003, a construction worker walked into the Wellesley,
Mass., office of attorney Richard J. Sullivan. He was looking for
someone to represent him in a case against Chicago-based S-B Power
Tool. The worker had lost his thumb and four fingers while using a
table saw. Doctors were able to reattach them, but even after six
surgeries and $150,000 in medical bills, he still had no real
functionality in the hand. Living on workers' comp, he fell behind
financially and was forced to sell his home.

Sullivan turned the case down twice because he didn't see a way to
hold the manufacturer accountable. Then a colleague told him about
SawStop. "His injury occurred on a saw manufactured in April 2003 and
sold in May 2003," Sullivan says. "The industry has known about this
technology since 2001. That gave the manufacturer plenty of time to
react." The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts state court in the summer
of 2004, alleges that the manufacturer was negligent for not
implementing the technology and seeks compensation for lost wages,
future lost wages, and pain and suffering. (Attorneys for S-B Power
Tool responded in January, denying all claims.) "If Gass can figure
this out by tinkering around in his backyard, what has this industry
been doing for the past 20 years?" asks Sullivan, who has since taken
on five similar cases. "They're like the auto industry, which had to
be dragged kicking and screaming to install air bags."

Gass believes that Sullivan's cases are only the tip of the iceberg.
"The legal standard says you have to make a product as safe as you
reasonably can, and if you fail to do that, you're going to be
responsible," he says. While Gass wants SawStop to be successful
financially, he also admits that what began as an interesting physics
problem in his workshop has become something of a crusade. "This is
important to society and that responsibility weighs on me," he says.
"It would have been so much easier if the manufacturers had just
licensed this. Then, having SawStop would be just like having a stereo
with Dolby or running shorts with Gore-Tex." Indeed, Gass still dreams
of getting out of manufacturing altogether. He really doesn't want to
make the power tools we buy. He just wants to make the power tools we
buy better.

Melba Newsome is a freelance writer in Charlotte, N.C.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2004 Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing. All rights reserved.
Inc.com, 375 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10018.


------------------------------

_______________________________________________
commons-law mailing list
commons-law at sarai.net
https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law


End of commons-law Digest, Vol 31, Issue 3
******************************************