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All Our Patent Are Belong To You

teslamotors.com

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Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#51

Post by chc »

colanderman wrote: post #33

FFS, change the title back to what it was submitted with! "All Our Patent Are Belong To You" makes no sense out of context. At least the original title said something about Tesla Motors.

This has been discussed a lot over the past few years. The title-changing policy is very widely disliked and leads to a lot of clearly poor results like this, but the mods are completely uninterested in changing it, so there it is. I don't know why we're even allowed to write titles anymore — it may just as well be populated by an automatic HTTP request.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#52

Post by icambron »

mwsherman wrote: post #39

There is no legal covenant here. I imagine Tesla’s definition of “good faith” is “we evaluate on a case by case basis”. Which amounts to “if we like you” and “we reserve the right”. If they wanted these patents to be open source, they would license them explicitly.

I'm curious about this. To what degree is a CEO writing and publicly distributing the statement, "Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology." legally binding? "In good faith" actually strikes me as reasonably interpretable by a court, so I guess the question is just how much "he said so in a blog post" counts. I'd love to hear a lawyer weigh in on this.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#53

Post by fidotron »

The interesting subtext here is that for Tesla to fulfil its potential more support for electric cars in wider society is needed, and while everyone else struggles to build electric cars the infrastructure won't catch up.

Opening up, in this sense, could be seen to be a selfish endeavour, but still a positive one, aiming to position Tesla as the Apple of the electric car market, only mildly less litigious.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#55

Post by seldo »

mwsherman wrote: post #39

There is no legal covenant here. I imagine Tesla’s definition of “good faith” is “we evaluate on a case by case basis”. Which amounts to “if we like you” and “we reserve the right”. If they wanted these patents to be open source, they would license them explicitly.

They have definitely left a lot of wiggle room and you'd be crazy to build stuff based on their patents without a licensing agreement, but I think this signals that they are very open to licensing their technology, and are not trying to "build a moat". This would be a lot more interesting if they were willing to state the terms on which they are willing to license the patents, but there are probably complex legal issues with saying so explicitly.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#56

Post by criley2 »

smackfu wrote: post #2

"Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology." What exactly does that little "in good faith" clause mean in there?

People are optimistic but I'm with you.

For example, using the Supercharger network requires that the automotive company offer energy for free for life to customers, and charge up front at the point of sale for all energy requirements for the life of the vehicle.

That's Musk's business model and is enforcing it for anyone who wants to use his "open infrastructure".

Which is bollocks to me: only wealthy people buying extremely expensive vehicles are going to want to prepay for a decade or two's worth of electricity. It means BMW and Audi will Supercharge, but Toyota and Ford? You can't ask budget customers to prepay a decade's worth of travel costs. You can't competitively and aggressively price a vehicle like that.

I imagine "good faith" means "follow OUR rules for the industry", which makes me sad. I'd like to see things be a bit more open than that, and I have very little doubt that this "standard" will be duplicated by companies unwilling to play by wealthy rules.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#58

Post by gtirloni »

IBM wrote: post #8
gkoberger wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to keep the patents (or donate them to a trusted third part, as a bunch of tech companies have done). They unfortunately need the protection. Otherwise, someone could sue them . I think Musk's word in this case is good. He's not a nobody; his reputation is stellar.

They should license the patents for free to anyone who wants to use them. There's no word needed.

Looks who's talking, the largest patent holder and bureaucratic entity on Earth. Yeah, right ;)

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#59

Post by fishtoaster »

kevinchen wrote: post #44
mwsherman wrote: post #39

There is no legal covenant here. I imagine Tesla’s definition of “good faith” is “we evaluate on a case by case basis”. Which amounts to “if we like you” and “we reserve the right”. If they wanted these patents to be open source, they would license them explicitly.

They would be on the receiving end of a PR shitstorm if they tried to enforce their patents after publishing this.

True, but if you were Gigantic Auto Manufacturer, would you build these patents into a billion-dollar factory without a stronger guarantee that Tesla won't about-face in 5-10 years? I wouldn't risk it.
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