Yesterday we mentioned a judgement against Home Depot for copying a patented saw design that they refused to pay the inventor for. I searched for additional information about this online, but without pulling the court documents, we have no choice but to rely on secondary sources.
After scouring the web a bit, a few additional details did come up, although the story seems to be far from complete.
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The lawsuit said that Home Depot alerted Powell of a safety issue with the saw that was causing injuries. Powell, who had been a 20-year independent contractor with the company, came up with the solution, a “Safe Hands” device, to protect Home Depot’s employees. Home Depot refused to pay Powell for the device and began installing the safety device on its saws without permission.
A key piece of evidence in the case was a photo of a former Home Depot executive carrying tape measures, pencils and pads and examining one of Powell’s prototypes that had been installed at a Georgia store.
The invention in question is a safety device that is affixed to the radial/panel saws. What is not clear is why Home Depot alerted Powell to the issue. Was Powell acting in a consultant role and hired to find a solution, or was he somehow involved in the development of the saws themselves that were considered unsafe?
What also bothers me is how there were so many injuries before the safety devices were implemented. Did Home Depot not believe in properly training employees authorized to use these saws?
PutnamEco
Re: yesterdays comment: you could go to your local home depot to see if it’s installed
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I did,
They seem to have a stock panel saw, however their radial arm saw (an Original Saw Company saw) had a plywood box on the table covering the cut line with a notch cut out for the blade to travel through. Did not look really well engineered. It did looks like it would keep hands away from the actual cut area and with the hoop blade guard keeping hands out of blade. Does not look like it would work well for bevels and I would think miters would be impossible through this device. They would probably be better served by getting a dedicated under table cutoff saw with an automatic guard.
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Re: Did Home Depot not believe in properly training employees authorized to use these saws?
They probably did train them, They probably just don’t pay well enough or have a employee culture that encourages competent people to work or stay employed there. How many people competent with power tools will really be working in retail even with the current economic down turn?
Benjamen Johnson
Somebody over on Digg dug up the patent.
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=PhR3AAAAEBAJ
It looks like a dust collection box coupled with a spring loaded blade guard.
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The reporting on this case is spotty. They don’t even clear up the most critical detail: if he was being paid by Home Depot to design this or used their resources.
Anybody who has created Intellectual Property for any company has probably run into a clause in their contact that if you used the tiniest sliver of our resources the company owns the design.
Personally I find the clause offensive, and would like to find such clauses unenforceable, but right now they are pretty common because a company can get away with them.
JML
Look at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/home-depot-called-arrogant-ordered-to-pay-ex-680890.html for a newspaper report on the jury verdict, and for an earlier ruling on various motions before trial, see http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/florida/flsdce/0:2008cv61862/325644/58/0.pdf
Stuart
We linked to that PalmBeachPost article , but that other document is new to me. For some reason, the pdf isn’t opening for me.
Until/unless Home Depot issues a press release (which they probably won’t), the full story might not work its way to the surface.
Steve
Here are some of the facts I read in other articles. They never asked Michael Powell directly to fix this problem. He was the guy that fixed their saws when they broke and he installed keypads on them so the general public couldn’t operate the saws. He did this for almost 20 years. When he was told that HD’s CEO ordered all the saws removed because of all the employee injuries, he worked around the clock to come up with a way to make them safer so he could keep his business. When they saw (no pun intended) his idea, they loved it and ordered 8 test units. They immediately copied them and the inventor even had pictures of them measuring it.
The employee injuries were mainly due to the fact that HD employees are not skilled in the use of saws. HD does train them (ironically with a video that shows how to use one of inventor’s first 8 units that HD copied), but accidents still occurred. Apparently, the cotton gloves they were told to wear were subject to being sucked into the spinning blade.