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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

#91

Post by maxcan »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #84
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.

This seems to be the right amount of wriggle room. A high profile company like Tesla is not going to want to be seen suing two high schools students using an electric motor to power their Tanzanian school. But they want to reserve the right to stop the White Supremecist Indy 500 team using the same engine. Seems like the best of a bunch of good and bad choices

But aren't Tanzanian students on the wrong side of the law already?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vxHkAQRQUQ

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#92

Post by redthrowaway »

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.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#93

Post by TeMPOraL »

jayrox wrote: post #79
oddevan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly the most plausible reading of that phrase, but it still seems like it could be put into a licence pretty easily, along the lines of "User of these patents hereby relinquishes all claims of infringement against Tesla Motors for any patents the user may own or license".

i read "in good faith" as "you may use these as you wish but don't turn around and try to sue us for using something you hold a patent for" i could be totally off the mark though

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.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#94

Post by beltex »

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.

133 seems about right. 136 by my count of the Tesla patent wall via Steve Jurvetson.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/14405402742/

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#95

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#96

Post by NicoJuicy »

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.

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 electrical fuel stations and not other car dealers, because Tesla dominates the electrical car "scene" right now (personal opinion)... But i don't consider one , because there aren't any electrical fuel station arround here (Belgium) - although they are working on that as fast as they can, checkout http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger and scroll between "open right now" and "winter 2014-2015".

I think it's a good business move from Tesla.. I'm just curious what happens when a car manufacturer takes the patents, adds one of their own patents and then unites with a other car manufacturers.... Leaving Tesla in the dark, is that possible or are there some limits to "opening" their patents?

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#97

Post by jonnathanson »

icambron wrote: post #52
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.

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.

"Good faith" is somewhat subjective, and usually it depends on context. Generally speaking, it means acting in an as-stated, forthright, non-deceptive manner.

For example, if I agree to explore a partnership with you "in good faith," it means I am serious about the possibility of a partnership. I am not merely wasting your time for the purposes of distracting you, defrauding you, conducting market espionage, or sending false signals. Basically, I am acting "in good faith" when I honestly believe I am doing what I claim to be doing, for the reasons I claim to be doing it. You assume I am acting in good faith, and vice versa, unless a pattern of actions or evidence gives sufficient cause to doubt it.

IANAL, but I've dealt with "good faith" issues in business development and licensing contracts more times than I wish I'd had to. There is usually an implicit assumption that all contracts are entered into in good faith unless proven otherwise -- which means I'd almost definitely want to enter into an agreement with Tesla if I were to use their technology.

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#99

Post by Alex_MJ »

(1) I love this.

(2) Having limited legal knowledge, I'm curious what he means with "a lottery ticket to a lawsuit". Is he indicating that patenting something would make a company more likely to get sued? My basic understanding is the opposite, that patents yield protection from lawsuits rather than create exposure to them. Is this flawed?

Re: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

#100

Post by seldo »

dnautics wrote: post #76
seldo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have definitely left a lot of wiggle room and you'd be crazy to build stuff based on their patents without a licensing agreement, but I think this signals that they are very open to licensing their technology, and are not trying to "build a moat". This would be a lot more interesting if they were willing to state the terms on which they are willing to license the patents, but there are probably complex legal iss…

Easier would be if they created an online form or possibly a meatspace dropbox (to realistically prevent DDOSes) which auto-issues you a license to use their patents at zero monetary cost or cost of postage.

I am pretty sure I can think of simpler ways to issue a fee-free license to a patent.
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