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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

#161

Post by nolok »

ajsharp wrote: post #90

Interesting point: > At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are…

That's because he is being disingenuous there, he is not talking about money invested in R&D but percentage of electric cars in total sales.

Those companies have an established market share which correspond to a massive number of non-electric car sales, it is not surprising in the least that the new developing area they are coming in (electric) is being very small right now. That's doesn't mean they aren't doing a lot of R&D or lack the ability to uses those patents.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#162

Post by gohrt »

sp332 wrote: post #143
gdilla wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't know that! That turned out well. To the innovators go the spoils.

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.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#163

Post by randallsquared »

omaranto wrote: post #146
Perseids wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An upper bound is a valid estimation. Most people don't expect upper bounds, though, when talking about estimations. I for one would appreciate a less-than or less-than-or-equal sign when this is truly an upper bound, as it gives me a better idea of what to expect of the actual number of results in relation to the estimation.

> Most people don't expect upper bounds, though, when talking about estimations. What do you mean? If all I know about a number X is that it is an estimate for Y, I would expect X to be an upper bound for Y 50% of the time and a lower bound 50% of the time.

...if you don't know which way, it's not a boundary at all.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#164

Post by danielweber »

nbouscal wrote: post #151

Alex Tabarrok comments on this: "I believe that this announcement will be discussed in business schools for years to come much like Henry Ford’s announcement of the $5 a day wage." http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/06/tes...

Just like everyone remembers when the US bought up and public-domained all the aeronautic patents.

EDIT I should explicitly say that I am being sarcastic. Mr Tabarrok is believing what he wants to be true.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#166

Post by andrewfong »

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…

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.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#167

Post by nitid_name »

pdevr wrote: post #72
Arjuna wrote: post #27

Assuming that this search represents nearly all of them, that is approximately 133 patents: https://www.google.com/?tbm=pts&gws_rd=ssl#q=inassignee:%22T... Edit: Nice catch, peter_l_downs ... I didn't realize that the estimated search result of 6,430 would be off by such a large factor.

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.

Volvo did this with the seat belt.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#168

Post by chc »

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 seems to me that this press release was meant to invite interested parties to contact Tesla's legal department, though it didn't say so explicitly. If I ran a car company and saw this, that's what I would do, which I'm sure also didn't escape Tesla's notice. This press release seems more about announcing and explaining Tesla's intentions rather than acting as a binding agreement for a multibillion-dollar megacorp.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#169

Post by rayiner »

wyager wrote: post #156
rayiner wrote: post #101

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…

>This is the precise thing that patents are designed to prevent: to keep the market from turning into a race to see who can outsource most efficiently to China and inundate the public most completely with advertising. I have absolutely no idea how you possibly came to this conclusion.

When you make it easy to copy innovative designs, companies can really only compete on lower manufacturing costs and more advertising.[1] That's why engineering firms pushed for stronger IP protections through the WTO in the 1990's: Chinese and Korean companies were copying the designs of Cisco, etc, and undercutting them on prices because they didn't have any R&D expenses.

[1] At least when you're talking about physical products that are sold in one-off transactions for money. If you can leverage network effects or lock-in effects, or hide your innovations behind arms-length protocols, like many internet-based companies do, you're not as vulnerable to copycats.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#170

Post by guscost »

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…

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 humanity by selling chemical battery powered automobiles" it comes across as more than a bit hyperbolic. There is plenty of opportunity to criticize cynical attitudes without making such a ridiculous claim.

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