All Our Patent Are Belong To You

Post by cma » Thu, Jun 12, 2014, 6:40 PM UTC

pzxc wrote: post #124

icambron wrote: post #52

Earlier 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.

Nothing is legally binding without a meeting of the minds: offer, acceptance, and consideration. Tesla is offering not to sue you, yes. What are you giving Tesla in return? Who signed a contract memorializing this agreement? What money is changing hands? This promise is just as legally binding as the promises of political candidates when they are campaigning (i.e. not at all), and is worth exactly how much you paid f…

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jun 12, 2014, 6:41 PM UTC

graeham wrote: post #119

TeMPOraL wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it more along the lines of "you may use these as you wish but don't try to turn around and screw the electrification of transportation, harming humanity's future for your own short-term gain". Musk isn't doing it for money after all.

Tesla is a public company, Musk is reported to have a 32% stake [1], so is responsible to the other shareholders. If the decision didn't make business sense, he would expect to be replaced as Chairman and CEO. There may be altruism and mission involved, but Tesla isn't (and shouldn't be) a charity. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Tesla_Motors

Post by Perseids » Thu, Jun 12, 2014, 6:41 PM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #118

Istof wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently they don't estimate, they inflate how many results there are... For example, I never seen a case when their "estimate" was lower then the actual number of results.

An upper bound is a valid estimation. "Inflating" assumes that they have a good approximation, and that they arbitrarily increase it. I don't think that they do that.

Post by boomzilla » Thu, Jun 12, 2014, 6:45 PM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #96

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.

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…

Post by ctdonath » Thu, Jun 12, 2014, 6:47 PM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #92

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.

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.