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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

#181

Post by shawnz »

ctdonath wrote: post #139
redthrowaway wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything short of a legal document setting out which rights are waived and which are reserved, and under what circumstances, is just PR. No company is going to use a Tesla-patented technology without that guarantee.

Well, step 1 is PR telling the world they can do what they thought they couldn't - use Tesla's patents for free. I'm sure lawyers are busily writing suitable legal agreements as we type, just to clarify obvious concerns. Without that PR, few would be asking permission.

Why wouldn't they get all their ducks in a row before the announcement, though?

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#182

Post by NicoJuicy »

boomzilla wrote: post #137
NicoJuicy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many people have been in the same boat as Tesla, a young company in a trillion dollar industry with limited players. What Tesla is saying, here are my patents, let's start building electrical fuel stations arround the world, i can do a lot of them by myselve (and i'm doing that), but i don't have enough budget to do it arround the world. It seems clear to me, that Tesla's biggest obstacle for electrical cars is e…

Yeah, but we all know selling cars are mostly marketing :D. Tesla will have a field day if the other manufacturers do that. It's a risk, but it's a calculated risk with a huge amount of rewards for reasonable risk, which is exactly how smaller companies compete with the incumbents. No CEO from a big auto company could make this move, but Musk could, and did.

Let's say a manufacturer goes all in on the deal with Tesla and he brings out a superior car to Tesla (let's say Audi for example)...

Then people who want to choose an electric car, will think about Audi and Tesla.

It's not Tesla that is trying to get in the game, he's already in it... But are they willing to roll your dice against Tesla by competing him on popularity of products and joining him on aggressively providing fuel stations (hell, you can name it Audi Fuel Zone, if you want).

You could break out a huge market in no time, it wouldn't be bad to team up with Tesla to break open the market.. Although i wouldn't like to be Mercedes (for example), produce a electric car and say to my clients: hey, you can tank at a Audi Fuel Zone or we don't have an electric fuel stations compatible with our technology :)

None the less, electric cars are coming.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#183

Post by guscost »

natural219 wrote: post #171
guscost wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OK, that makes more sense. For the record I'm not at all concerned about the climate changing (although I'm very interested in conservation and efficiency in general). Additionally it seems that an electric car is not actually going to emit less whatever than one of these wonderful new four-cylinders unless/until we make like France and build out more nuclear infrastructure.

Still, Tesla is doing a lot of good by leading the way towards technologies that could bring much improved living conditions, especially in places like Beijing and Los Angeles.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#184

Post by TeMPOraL »

natural219 wrote: post #171
guscost wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not just battery technology, but also successfully pushing the electrification of transport against the entire car industry. Even if batteries would suddenly stop improving and remain forever on today's level, switching all cars to Model S equivalents would still have, in my opinion, tremendous impact on both climate change and upcoming fuel crisis.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#185

Post by Florin_Andrei »

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.

But if they do enforce the patents, wouldn't that destroy the good will that the company enjoys with the public?

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#186

Post by sp332 »

gohrt wrote: post #162
sp332 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite, actually. This is about giving the spoils to everyone who didn't invent the transistor.

the spoils to everyone who innovated on the transistor.

Not necessarily, unless they also got patents on their innovations.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#187

Post by stcredzero »

yonran wrote: post #178
andrewfong wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pat…

One would also have clauses to ensure that the products/devices produced under license would not be designed for lock-in and be compatible with electric cars from other companies.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#188

Post by qbrass »

nolok wrote: post #155
toomuchtodo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Toyota and Ford? You can't ask budget customers to prepay a decade's worth of travel costs. A 2014 Ford Focus gets ~40mpg. Assuming 12,000 miles/year, that's ~300 gallons of fuel. Assume, conservatively, $3/gallon. That's ~$900/year for fuel, or $2700 over 3 years. The cost to get supercharger access from Tesla is $2000 at time of purchase ($2500 after delivery). To finance $2000 at even a ridiculously high 10%…

"Budget car customers" include a lot of relatively poor people who cannot afford to make that fixed-amount decently-large payment every single month. And certainly not upfront at time of sale. Have you never seen someone who can "only put twenty buck of gas" ?

It will most likely be wrapped into the purchase price of the car and financed.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#189

Post by stcredzero »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #182
boomzilla wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but we all know selling cars are mostly marketing :D. Tesla will have a field day if the other manufacturers do that. It's a risk, but it's a calculated risk with a huge amount of rewards for reasonable risk, which is exactly how smaller companies compete with the incumbents. No CEO from a big auto company could make this move, but Musk could, and did.

Let's say a manufacturer goes all in on the deal with Tesla and he brings out a superior car to Tesla (let's say Audi for example)... Then people who want to choose an electric car, will think about Audi and Tesla. It's not Tesla that is trying to get in the game, he's already in it... But are they willing to roll your dice against Tesla by competing him on popularity of products and joining him on aggressively provi…

More of a "fuel free zone" than a "fuel zone."

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#190

Post by NicoJuicy »

stcredzero wrote: post #189
NicoJuicy wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say a manufacturer goes all in on the deal with Tesla and he brings out a superior car to Tesla (let's say Audi for example)... Then people who want to choose an electric car, will think about Audi and Tesla. It's not Tesla that is trying to get in the game, he's already in it... But are they willing to roll your dice against Tesla by competing him on popularity of products and joining him on aggressively provi…

More of a "fuel free zone" than a "fuel zone."

In a sense, electricity is the fuel of the car... But then again, i could be mistaking.

Got me on that one :)

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