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

211–220 of 328 posts

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#211

Post by criley2 »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #73
criley2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Only on HN I would find a comment which translates the act of freeing engineering patents into forcing business models upon other companies...

Only on HN will I find people who think saying "we won't sue you if you follow our rules" equates to "freeing engineering patents".

There's nothing "free" about Musk being the decider on whether or not you get sued.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#212

Post by syedzbadar »

I really admire Elon Musk--a lot. His insight that Tesla’s real competition isn't the Fords, Chryslers, etc., but rather it’s the momentum behind gasoline cars. And, if that momentum is the actual competition, then that momentum/competition can be broken by open sourcing Tesla’s technology… I think that his specific move on patents (as it relates to the auto industry) is an excellent example of having the perfect balance of having customer obsession and being competition aware.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#213

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bshanks wrote: post #199
yonran wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

http://www.defensivepatentlicense.com/ (i'm not asserting it is perfect, just that it is an effort towards what you describe)

It's an interesting attempt. The problem I'm seeing is that it seems to do nothing about non-practicing entities, or to prevent the sort of thing Microsoft et al have done with Rockstar, essentially paying to license a bunch of questionable patents with the foreseeable effect of giving the non-practicing entity enough cash to create a menace for their competitors.

What could be an interesting solution is to prevent people who want the protection of the mutual license from licensing patents from anyone else under any other terms. So if you want the protection of the license and a patent troll approaches you, your only choice is to either vanquish the troll or buy the patent outright and immunize everyone.

That should mean no more Rockstars at least, and should make life more difficult for trolls because they couldn't license patents anymore, only sell them outright.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#214

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sp332 wrote: post #186
gohrt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the spoils to everyone who innovated on the transistor.

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

You're aware that it's possible to make money on an invention without patenting it. First to market advantage, a foothold in the market, continuing brand recognition as the go-to source for that product, a head start on the next round of innovation, increased sales across the industry as the product becomes more valuable to customers, increased sales of complementary products and services, etc.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#215

Post by slantedview »

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…

It's basically a statement of intent, and there's no reason to believe they don't mean what they say. Hopefully this leads to progressed innovation.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#216

Post by slantedview »

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.

It's not, but it wasn't the point of the blog post to be a legally binding document, the point was to put the industry on notice that Tesla's patents are open and that they want to collaborate.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#217

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#219

Post by pyre »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #213
bshanks wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.defensivepatentlicense.com/ (i'm not asserting it is perfect, just that it is an effort towards what you describe)

It's an interesting attempt. The problem I'm seeing is that it seems to do nothing about non-practicing entities, or to prevent the sort of thing Microsoft et al have done with Rockstar, essentially paying to license a bunch of questionable patents with the foreseeable effect of giving the non-practicing entity enough cash to create a menace for their competitors. What could be an interesting solution is to prevent p…

> Microsoft et al have done with Rockstar

It is my understanding that Rockstar existed prior to Microsoft and others getting involved. They merely footed the bill.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#220

Post by tendom »

tcas wrote: post #112
pdevr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not like IBM making some of its less important patents available to the community. This is huge. How many times in the past has a private company opened up its core patents for everyone to use? There aren't that many precedences.

In 1956 AT&T opened all of it's patents to everyone without royalties to settle an antitrust suit, including the transistor. http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx1036.pdf

That was a calculation, assuming that they would loose more in the suit than in opening up it's patents, this isn't the same at all, though it is a direct response to the question.
Post reply on HN