151–160 of 328 posts
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/06/tes...
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Intellectual Ventures is known to weaponize their patents by “selling” them to a company that does nothing but sue other people and can’t be sued for infringement. Is there any license that Tesla can write to open their patents but protect themselves in the case that another car maker uses Tesla’s patents but sells their own patents to a company that sues Tesla?
IV could be what Tesla and SpaceX is, but Myhrvold is an empire building twit. The people he hires leave to do better things because the things they do are not good. So much wasted human capital.
If Tesla really wanted to see the big auto makers build more capable electric cars, AND if they also want to be a profitable enterprise, THEN, the best course of action would be to OEM the powertrain parts that they have already invested in inventing and building.
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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…
> 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%…
I 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…
I have absolutely no idea how you possibly came to this conclusion.
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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.
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 portfolio, on a worldwide non-exclusive no-royalty basis, to any interested party. We will ask for consideration in the amount of $1 for a 99 year license. Your lawyers and accountants can reassure you that these sort of symbolic commitments hold up in court. They'll also no doubt ask to see the full terms, which are about as boring as you'd expect, and which are available from our Legal Department."
In the biotech space there exists a system called "patentleft" which theoretically provides royalty-free licensing of patents with the stipulation that any derivative works / improvements also be licensed under the same terms. Seems like there is good potential to build on the momentum of Tesla's announcement to formalize the process, and answer the questions that I'm sure will emerge in this thread - eg more akin to…
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…
They come here, shit all over Musk and his accomplishments, and then go back to making a shitty photo sharing website. Seriously, fuck 'em all
Here's to the faith.