What I find hilarious about the discussions going on here is the fact that everyone's generally concentrating on the terrible pain of 'patent abuse', instead of the spectacularly obvious Elephant in the room which is trying to do as much as possible to stop the only home we currently have slowly turning into Venus (the hot, inhospitable planet, not the fictional Goddess of old).
All Our Patent Are Belong To You
311–320 of 328 posts
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#312If 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…
"Save humanity"? You should stop telling people to get the fuck over it and to go fuck themselves and get over yourself.
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#313I love Elon Musk, and kudos to them for doing this, but it's useful to read between the lines: > Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. This is consistent with my view of how engineers in the traditional disciplines view patents. > At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use th…
> In other words, it helps Tesla more to have lots of companies developing electric cars to push back on regulatory barriers and consumer perceptions than it does for them to protect themselves against larger manufacturers copying their technology.
Also, so somebody else will help pay for all of the Superchargers they want to build.
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#314This is a pretty good gesture. It will be good to spurt innovation since smaller players in the area don't need to worry about infringing. What about the defensive measure? To defend against being sued. It would be good if Tesla pools the patents with others to form an "open patent" club where all the interested parties can join and use the patent to defend against infringement lawsuits.
Think you mean 'spur' not 'spurt'. Sorry to be a pedant! Great points. :-)
Thanks for pointing out the error. I'll pay closer attention next time I use it. :)
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Lawyer here. Just very quickly, (i) a CEO's blog post itself is not legally binding on the company by nature, but it is a reflection of a corporate decision (typically the Board of Directors)behind the post. An action of this nature can only be challenged in court by the shareholders or dissenting board members in certain cases. (ii) a legal patent holder has every right of disposal over the patent, including the act…
Thanks!
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Because it's not just being lighthearted. It appears to be bad use of english.
Bad use of english is purposeful - it's a meme, one of the oldest and most widely recognized on the Internet. He's just showing some humour (not the first time). http://xkcd.com/286/ seems relevant here ;).
So you are saying that the audience for the blog post consists of an overwhelming number of people that understand that meme? As opposed to people who do not? I disagree.
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#317Is the title a reference to "all your base are belong to us?"
I found it pretty weird that someone like Elon would make such a reference. The site just looks too professional for the out of place internet meme.
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#318Earlier 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…
A NPE doesn't need your patent because they're non-practicing.
Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#319Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
Not intended to be a gotcha. That would be a silly one. (Downvotes on gp post: Now we see the humorless side of HN)