Not necessarily, unless they also got patents on their innovations.
You're aware that it's possible to make money on an invention without patenting it. First to market advantage, a foothold in the market, continuing brand recognition as the go-to source for that product, a head start on the next round of innovation, increased sales across the industry as the product becomes more valuable to customers, increased sales of complementary products and services, etc.
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.
> I'd also request that the licensing party grant a reciprocal bulk license to Tesla as well.
Quoting a good but dead comment for visibility: citrik 10 minutes ago | link [dead] I don't think the "in business to make profits" part is entirely true. Apple and Tesla are both leading examples of companies that are out for something other than profits first. You can say that shareholder interests and publicly traded companies require ... but at the end of the day those are two companies that don't let capitalist…
I've always thought that Apple is driven by wanting to control its own destiny and not have the short term interests of the market dictate its decisions. That's why it is stockpiling cash and hesitating to pay it out to its shareholders. Apple and Tesla just want to make great stuff. Not just great, esoteric stuff, but products that are also accessible to the mainstream. The profits are just a way of keeping score an…
I do not think Apple is an exception to the rule that "ALL public companies are out to make money first and foremost". Remember Jobs was outed because they couldn't see his vision? What happened was they then failed and were later sold on his vision bringing them more money so they put him back in charge. So while individuals have a vision, the corporation only sees green. Everything else is a strategy to achieve it. If you believe that, it follows that internet companies sue each other not because they aren't adults, but because patent law is broken and they are, by their nature, obliged to take advantage of it.
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.
I believe that the various employees at Apple and Tesla, like lots of employees at lots of companies, are there because they enjoy what they do and want to make and do great things. That includes technical and executive staff. But the overall business goal is to make money, because unless they're making money they employees will not be able to continue making great things or doing great things.
This seems about as meaningful as saying the employees' overall goal is to eat food, because without food their bodies will not be able to continue doing great things.
Perhaps the point being made was that the individual motives/goals of the employees are irrelevant to assessing the overall motives of the company as a whole. Personally I'd say it's whatever the CEO's goals are, but shared agency is a weird thing.
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…
Isn't there a precedent? Volvo opening up the three-point seatbelt patents. Does anyone know the particulars of how that worked? My google-fu is weak, all I can find are articles that sound like PR.
"We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China," said Musk in the interview. "If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book." Perhaps Tesla relies on trade secrecy as well?
It´s easier to keep a rocket under trade secrecy than a car that can be disassembled and copied as soon as you got your hands on it.
OK, that makes more sense. For the record I'm not at all concerned about the climate changing (although I'm very interested in conservation and efficiency in general). Additionally it seems that an electric car is not actually going to emit less whatever than one of these wonderful new four-cylinders unless/until we make like France and build out more nuclear infrastructure. Still, Tesla is doing a lot of good by lea…
You're wrong on the emissions point - even a contemporary, luxury electric car like the Model S causes less CO2 emissions from a well-to-wheels perspective than an effiient gasoline car, even if run exclusively on coal-generated electricity. The crucial part of the calculation is to also take into consideration the energy required to produce the fuel, which is often skipped when analyzing the CO2 emissions of fossil-…
> On the climate change front, you're probably in disagreement with scientific consensus, but this is not my field of expertise.
A lot of us like to believe we're rational actors in the world, but denying scientific consensus on this is very irrational, if not just badly misinformed.
Fair enough. I'm emotional. I don't usually cuss when making logical points. What I meant to say is, electric battery technology will move humanity in the right step which I strongly believe will have a big impact on curbing climate change, which I feel is one of the biggest challenges humans collectively face.
OK, that makes more sense. For the record I'm not at all concerned about the climate changing (although I'm very interested in conservation and efficiency in general). Additionally it seems that an electric car is not actually going to emit less whatever than one of these wonderful new four-cylinders unless/until we make like France and build out more nuclear infrastructure. Still, Tesla is doing a lot of good by lea…
> I'm not at all concerned about the climate changing