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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

#201

Post by nfriedly »

nolok wrote: post #155
toomuchtodo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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%…

"Budget car customers" include a lot of relatively poor people who cannot afford to make that fixed-amount decently-large payment every single month. And certainly not upfront at time of sale. Have you never seen someone who can "only put twenty buck of gas" ?

Yea, but someone in that position probably shouldn't be buying any new car.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#202

Post by codewiz »

Funny how the companies with the best engineering also tend to be those with the best business ethics. Kudos to Tesla for being once again disruptive and innovative in the risk-averse and ailing automotive industry.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#203

Post by sandstrom »

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…

I think it partly an ethical thing. Patents doesn't (most of the time) benefit society, they only create monopolies (which are about as helpful as those in many socialist countries, i.e. not very much).

I think Musk cares more about advancing electric cars than suing and squeeze profits out of patent monopolies.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#204

Post by CamperBob2 »

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.

No company is going to use a Tesla-patented technology without that guarantee.

Lots of people are saying this, but I don't understand it. My understanding (IANAL) is that when the CEO publishes something like this on the company's official web site, it becomes completely impossible for the company to win any future patent suits due to promissory estoppel.

Musk has effectively stuffed all of the company's patents into his office shredder. Good for him.

(Edit: He has also intentionally lowered the market value of the company by a certain amount, which is interesting.)

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#205

Post by gdilla »

gohrt wrote: post #162
sp332 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what I meant. THose that generated the most value on the transistor, got the spoils - eg Fairchild, Intel, etc

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#206

Post by btbuildem »

superuser2 wrote: post #198
jeffh wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are actually unaware of Ford's "innovations" on pay, or the reasoning behind them, but that does not dilute the profound impact the actions had.

It's 4th grade US history curriculum.

most people don't live in the US

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#208

Post by soperj »

sandstrom wrote: post #203
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…

I think it partly an ethical thing. Patents doesn't (most of the time) benefit society, they only create monopolies (which are about as helpful as those in many socialist countries, i.e. not very much). I think Musk cares more about advancing electric cars than suing and squeeze profits out of patent monopolies.

Don't know what you have against socialist countries(ie: most of the G7) but you definitely have monopolies in the U.S.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#210

Post by seanp2k2 »

stcredzero wrote: post #187
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…

One would also have clauses to ensure that the products/devices produced under license would not be designed for lock-in and be compatible with electric cars from other companies.

Interesting; almost like a "SA" license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ but for product compatibility.
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