Company Sued, Loses For Not Using Patented Tech

bdcrazy writes "A man was recently awarded $1.5M in a jury trial after his hand was injured by a Ryobi table saw. The saw did not include the patented 'Saw Stop' technology that the plaintiff argued would have prevented all the problems." 60 similar cases have now been filed nationwide. TechDirt makes the argument that this jury decision is completely crazy: "If the government is going to require companies to use a patented technology, it seems that the only reasonable solution is to remove the patent on it and allow competition in the market place." If the decision stands, not only will the price of table saws go way up, but other hungry patent-holders will probably get a gleam in their eye.

Comments

Re:Don't Expect Anything to Change

[CorporateSuit]

Because it would only save a few billion dollars, and when someone is working with a multi-trillion dollar issue, it doesn't really matter?

Yes. Considering what I have to give up to send the government those billions of dollars they simply want run over with a lawnmower, because they find it convenient.

muddying up the waters with malpractice reform would harm the goal of getting every American insured.

No it certainly wouldn't. It would practically solve it. Malpractice is one enormous CAUSE of the high price of healthcare in the US. The other is patented medical technology. (A hospital can't use a ROCK as a paperweight unless it pays the guy $6,000 who thought of using a COMMON, SMOOTH RIVER ROCK in a hospital.) Both are litigation-based and have expanded 2000% past their usefulness.

Obama can't fix that, because he's a lawyer, and doing so would be treason to the bar.