Toyota Builds a Patent Thicket For Hybrid Cars

Lorien_the_first_one sends along a WSJ piece reporting on how Toyota is hoping to benefit from new Obama Administration regulations for automobiles here in the US. "Since it started developing the gas-electric Prius more than a decade ago, Toyota has kept its attorneys just as busy as its engineers, meticulously filing for patents on more than 2,000 systems and components for its best-selling hybrid. Its third-generation Prius, which hit showrooms in May, accounts for about half of those patents alone. Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota, as Ford Motor Co. already did to make its Escape hybrid and Nissan Motor Co. has for its Altima hybrid."

Comments

Maybe this is the good kind of patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

If patents are supposedly to encourage new technological developments, without knowing the details, it sounds like this might actually be a responsible use. After all, it gives Toyota a financial incentive to come up with more efficient cars. And the competition is actually licensing it. Unlike in the farmaceutical industry, where companies patent publicly-funded findings from NIH research so that they can be the only ones profiting from it. Or software, where people patent stuff to be able to sue their competitors out of a product space.