Tool Makers Forced To Include Patented Safety Technology

There are many lawsuits around the area of patents, the patent system claims that patent holders have a right to stop other people from using their inventions within their own patent. Lawsuits generally occur because people disagree as to whether the patent laws have infact been broken. An interesting case of this lawsuit nature came about with a patent regarding Tool Makers. A couple of years ago SawStop was a company who designed a safety tool, it was a table saw that even in the midst of cutting wood would stop if your hand or fingers got in the way. They featured many videos of the saw working and posted it all over the web and it’s incredible. The only problem was that they were apprehensive as to whether Tool Makers may sue if at any time the saw failed to work and with them selling it as a safety tool they could potentially be faced with a large law suit so they did not market or sell the tool.

From this story a man in Boston has sued Ryobi a well known Tool Making brand for not including this safety feature with their table saw after he suffered a major accident. The complaint was simply that Ryobi should have included this safety tool makers feature within their table saw to protect tool makers hands. The jury agreed with this complaint and the man won the lawsuit. The result of this lawsuit caused quite a stir and even created many other lawsuits. The ruling meant that other table saw companies had to buy SawStop’s patent technology for their own product when they believed that the market did not want the feature. The main disadvantage to this safety tool makers technology is the cost, another reason why they did not pursue with the product that the amount it costs to create is more than they believe people would pay, but with this new ruling it means that they have to include the safety feature and the public will have to pay the extra costs.

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