Readit NewsRegulations favor the established.
The 3-point seat belt is another time this happened and probably one of the few feel-good "this should be available to everyone" patent stories: Volvo designed it, decided the safety-for-humanity* benefits outweighed patent protections, and made the patent open for anyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin (*: at least the segment of humanity that drives cars)
I'd be curious to hear the cynical take here. If I was to wargame it, I would guess something like: SawStop doesn't want to compete with Harbor Freight and cheap chinese tool manufacturers -- that's a race to the bottom, and power tools have turned into ecosystem lock-in plays which makes it difficult for a niche manufacturer to win in. So they'd rather compete on just the safety mechanism since they have a decade head start on it. They're too niche to succeed on SawStop(TM) workbenches, and they forsee bigger profits in a "[DeWalt|Milwaukee|EGo|...], Protected by SawStop(TM)" world.
All his words. He's trying to explain that sure, the patent is open, but companies are still going to have to work harder than Sawstop because they have many more patents they refuse to open that cover the best and most logical implementation of this idea.
You're asking for a "cynical" take, but it's not really cynical! The CEO is trying to tell everyone, openly, and they're not listening. They are NOT altruistic, otherwise they would have opened the entire suite of patents. They are openly saying this singular patent is open, because it doesn't matter and that they will doggedly defend their other patents. Now, every other manufacturer will now need to navigate a minefield of patent litigation, and follow the path of subpar implementations that Sawstop ruled out during their R&D.
I don't know why everyone is ignoring his testimony and thinking the company is giving anything up, it's wild!
The current regulations favor the established. In a society that is not entirely regulatory captured, where money does not equal political speech as much, regulations could favor independent family farmers.
I am writing this from the middle of EU farm country, and one of the things that regulations/policies do here is prevent multi-national corporations from buying family farms. The argument against this policy is that family farms are economically inefficient. I will take that trade-off every single day.
Livestock welfare regs in the EU did end up favoring corporations in recent years, to some extent. But, at least in my area, family crop farms will be protected by regulations for the foreseeable future.
Which is why de-regulation is the answer in this case. If a regulation is bad, roll it back, don't put another layer of complexity on top. Complexity, again, favors the incumbents. They have more resources to deal with all the nuances.