Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All Our Patent Are Belong To You

teslamotors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 328 posts

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#171

Post by natural219 »

guscost wrote: post #170
natural219 wrote: post #115

If you want to track the death of the cultural vision of Silicon Valley -- the belief that some people, at least, can rise above petty human squabbling and competition and are legitimately working to better humanity -- look no further than this thread. Every top comment is a skeptical one. "This is clearly a great PR move, but has no teeth." "How do you enforce this guarantee?" Etc. These are reasonable questions, bu…

Elon Musk is one of the most interesting inventors of our time, and comes across as a completely stand-up guy. Watching companies like Tesla and SpaceX take on and solve these incredibly difficult problems is inspiring. I'd guess that this patent move is motivated by goodwill, and any benefit to Tesla probably goes together with the larger goal of bringing good to the world. But when I see "this man will save humanit…

Fair enough. I'm emotional. I don't usually cuss when making logical points. What I meant to say is, electric battery technology will move humanity in the right step which I strongly believe will have a big impact on curbing climate change, which I feel is one of the biggest challenges humans collectively face.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#172

Post by ethbro »

gtirloni wrote: post #58
IBM wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

I believe that was the joke. :)

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#173

Post by genericuser »

patio11 wrote: post #158

So an informal non-aggression pact is nice, but absolutely no automobile manufacturer would rely on that when a new car costs a significant fraction of a billion dollars to bring to market. (If I were a cynical man, I might think this didn't escape their notice.) If it were me, and the true intent was to distribute the Tesla patents as widely as possible, I would have said "Tesla pledges to license its entire patent…

I saw the press release as more directed towards average automobile buyers. As a "We will not be the ones preventing your favorite Automobile manufacturer from producing an Electric Car in the style you want, and neither will the research cost of the technologies we use".

I believe the message was phrased in a way to be directed at consumers so that hopefully the consumers will send a message one way or another to the other manufacturers causing them to come to more official agreements with Tesla. (which will of course have terms).

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#174

Post by gonzo »

icambron wrote: post #52
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.

"Promissory estopple". Look it up.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#175

Post by jeffh »

danielweber wrote: post #164
nbouscal wrote: post #151

Alex Tabarrok comments on this: "I believe that this announcement will be discussed in business schools for years to come much like Henry Ford’s announcement of the $5 a day wage." http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/06/tes...

Just like everyone remembers when the US bought up and public-domained all the aeronautic patents. EDIT I should explicitly say that I am being sarcastic. Mr Tabarrok is believing what he wants to be true.

Most people are actually unaware of Ford's "innovations" on pay, or the reasoning behind them, but that does not dilute the profound impact the actions had.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#178

Post by yonran »

andrewfong wrote: post #166
patio11 wrote: post #158

So an informal non-aggression pact is nice, but absolutely no automobile manufacturer would rely on that when a new car costs a significant fraction of a billion dollars to bring to market. (If I were a cynical man, I might think this didn't escape their notice.) If it were me, and the true intent was to distribute the Tesla patents as widely as possible, I would have said "Tesla pledges to license its entire patent…

If I were Tesla, I'd also request that the licensing party grant a reciprocal bulk license to Tesla as well. Or, barring that, that Tesla reserves the right to revoke the license if you initiate a patent lawsuit against it.

Does there exist such a patent license with no security holes? I would imagine that it would read, “License will be revoked if you 1) Sue me for patent infringement. 2) Sell a patent to a company that sues me for patent infringement (like Intellectual Ventures does). 3) Sponsor the development of a patent, and the owner of the patent sues me for patent infringement. 4) Contract with a patent pool that sues me for patent infringement. 5) Sue my partners or customers for patent infringement (like Apple vs. Google’s partners)...” and so on ad infinitum.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#179

Post by bdcs »

askar_yu wrote: post #176

"All Our Patent Are Belong To You" this sentence sounds grammatically incorrect to my non-native-English ear (O_o)

You are correct. "All Our Patent Are Belong To You" is a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

FYI, in correct English the sentence would read, "All of our patents belong to you."

Post reply on HN