Tesla Releases Electric Car Patents To the Public

mknewman (557587) writes with a welcome followup to the broad hints that Tesla might release some of its patents for others to use patents that it has amassed. Now, Elon Musk writes on the company's blog: Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology. Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

Comments

Trust but verify

[cunniff]

If I were personally going to use one of Tesla's patents in my business, I'd want a signed zero-cost GPL-like license agreement with Tesla. For example, Musk's good will is nice, but what if someone else were to acquire Tesla's IP?

Re:Trust but verify

[TWX]

The question I would have though is what it means to be in good faith...

Bingo.

If I had any real forward momentum with an electric car design that might use something patented by Tesla, I'd approach them to get a formal agreement, even if it's just a rubber-stamp formality. The tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer costs to ensure that millions of dollars in lawsuits are avoided would be worthwhile.

It is worthy to note that automakers have released patents before. Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt that has become the ubiquitous seatbelt today, and they felt that it was so important that they released their patent early specifically so that other automakers could make their cars safer.

I kind of also expect that Tesla has something new, so these patents aren't all that important to protect their business, as their new thing will probably blow the doors off of the current stuff.

Re:Trust but verify

[swillden]

If I were personally going to use one of Tesla's patents in my business, I'd want a signed zero-cost GPL-like license agreement with Tesla. For example, Musk's good will is nice, but what if someone else were to acquire Tesla's IP?

It wouldn't matter, I don't think. A clearer statement than "we took our plaques off our wall" is needed, but assuming there is a clear statement from Tesla that they will only use these patents defensively, anyone who takes them at their word should be safe.

Why? There's a legal concept called "promissory estoppel". In a nutshell, it means that if I make you a promise and you, in good faith, depend upon that promise and build your business on it, and I knew or should have known that you were going to do so, then I can't later change my mind, withdraw my promise and sue you for doing what I said you could do.

Re:Trust but verify

[SlaveToTheGrind]

You're fully correct about the legal doctrine, but in reality there's a non-zero chance that it will cost you a very large number of dollars to defend a patent lawsuit filed by a future assignee who convinces the judge that even the "clearer statement" (1) wasn't so clear and/or (2) didn't apply to your particular use.

There's actually a simple way that Tesla could make this binding -- formally disclaim the rest of the term of the patents at the Patent Office.

37 C.F.R. 1.321 Statutory disclaimers, including terminal disclaimers.
(a) A patentee owning the whole or any sectional interest in a patent may disclaim any complete claim or claims in a patent. In like manner any patentee may disclaim or dedicate to the public the entire term, or any terminal part of the term, of the patent granted. Such disclaimer is binding upon the grantee and its successors or assigns. A notice of the disclaimer is published in the Official Gazette and attached to the printed copies of the specification.

It will be interesting to see if they actually go that far.

Re:Trust but verify

[MightyYar]

That would defeat their ability to use the patents defensively. For example, Toyota coming after them for violating some Prius patent.

Re:Trust but verify

[The Snowman]

Of course what Elon Musk is offering here is not a license or a promise, but a vaguely worded statement:

It's a trap.

Not really. It is a blanket contract with the public at large. This was a public statement made in a public forum, and it carries with it the full force of contract law. If he tries to sue anyone who acted "in good faith" this statement could be used as evidence against him in a court of law.

Re:Trust but verify

[Barsteward]

mercedes refused, for the benefit of everyone, to patent anti-lock brakes and it didn't do them any harm. not everything is for profit, sad life if it is.

does Elon Musk's infamy know no bounds?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy really is the most devious and evil of all of Ian Flemming's villains.

Wow

[meta-monkey]

Now, I don't wanna do anything gay or nothin', but I kinda wanna make love to this man.

Thanks

[Prien715]

Thank you Elon Musk.

If only every other CEO had the same courage. Also, if he's willing to do this for SpaceX, I have no problems with a private company doign space exporation.

Re:Thanks

[cbhacking]

Tesla and SpaceX are currently in very, very different markets. Tesla is selling luxury consumer products, and trying to get the economies of scale + technical innovation to start selling non-luxury consumer products, where the real market is. They are also competing against an entrenched, widely-deployed technology that has been in widespread use for longer than 99.9% of the human race has been alive. They need their product to become more than a niche, and they need to have viable competition if for no other reason than for the legitimacy that competition brings.

SpaceX sells cheap, high-tech rocket launches, where cheap means something like what a "cheap" computer in the 50s would mean: governments and really big organizations can afford to buy them, and nobody else is even going to consider it. In a way, they're the opposite of Tesla: rather than being a luxury brand trying to get cheaper, they're aiming to be the cheap alternative to the existing competition.

Unlike Tesla, SpaceX is not publicly traded and does not file for patents. Patents provide no meaningful protection against the Chinese or Russian governments, which are the organizations SpaceX is most interested in competing with. SpaceX patenting their stuff would allow those entities to undercut SpaceX for the small number of customers that even exist in such a space, because they could use the disclosed technology without needing to recoup R&D investments or pay California salaries and regulatory costs.

The problem is that SpaceX is the only organization in the world currently demonstrating great success in disrupting the entrenched space launch market, and they need to (and do) re-invest their profits from those launches into producing still-better (cheaper) launchers if the want to achieve their stated goals of making space access cheap enough that actual human beings can afford it. They can't afford to be undercut, because there just aren't enough customers right now for them to afford to do other than fight for every purchase they can get. Tesla can totally afford to be undercut; it will help grow their market (electric car owners) and meanwhile there will always be people who will buy their cars just because the market is big enough.

A share-alike clause?

[Bradmont]

It would be amazing if he added a share-alike clause to licensing these patents. That is to say, make it free to use any of Tesla's patents, under the condition that you provide the same free access, under the same conditions, to any technology your company develops as a derivitave.

Is There A List?

[CanHasDIY]

Read through the blog post, didn't see a link or listing of the patents that they've 'open-sourced.'

Anybody know where to find them? I'm curious.

Re:What does "In Good Faith" mean?

[bluefoxlucid]

Good faith is a legal concept often addressed in court. Some opposite concepts are bad faith and negligence. All of these center around the beliefs of a rational person: if a rational person with appropriate qualifications (i.e. your engineers did X, would an engineer know the implications of X?) would understand the consequences of an action, then you are held to that understanding. If you act such that you should know the outcome is harmful and contrary to what would be considered good faith, you are acting in bad faith.

An example of bad faith would be production of sub-quality components with a staff of engineers who understand the limits of such components. If you built chargers with 14ga wire to carry 20A currant, using aluminum core wire with extremely thin electroplating, those chargers would degrade quickly. If you are doing so and then marketing heavily in areas trafficked heavily by Tesla cars, we can reasonably assume you are committing sabotage: these chargers will quickly degrade, causing charging issues and damaging Tesla's image. If you release your own charger architecture of better quality, the evidence reinforces this: Why would you use 12ga full copper wire for 20A chargers of your design, but 14ga aluminum core for 20A of Tesla's design?

Evidence of ulterior motives and willful negligence constitute bad faith.

What about the shareholders?

[ccb621]

Elon Musk owns about 23% of Tesla stock (http://business.time.com/2014/02/26/elon-musk-1-1-billion-tesla-tuesday/) and the board of directors probably owns another significant stake. The rest of the shareholders, myself included, don't have much of a voice. Honestly, I am fine with this. I don't know anything about running a car company or building electric vehicles, and I doubt the company leadership would do anything to lose their own money. Tesla is one of the few companies I trust because their motives have always seemed altruistic (aside from the obvious capitalistic qualities of any corporation).

His past...

[mycroft16]

It should be noted that Elon Musk has degrees in economics and physics as well as real world experience in the software field (PayPal) as well as engineering and business (SpaceX/Tesla). The man is incredibly intelligent and seems to really understand how things work. I'm willing to bet this decision wasn't made without the board. I'm sure Wall St won't like it and stocks may fall, but this is the correct decision. Musk is doing what many businesses don't seem to understand these days, playing the long game rather than the short game. He may lose a little in the short term, but long term, Tesla comes out a huge winner an brings up a whole lot of other winners with them. There's a good chance he explained all this to the board, and given their about to start battery production, they realized that they stand to have a huge revenue stream if they jump start the electric car industry in this way.

Re:What about the shareholders?

[swillden]

The plaintiffs would have to demonstrate how the company lost value by them doing that.

Also, if the articles of incorporation or the IPO documentation includes a statement indicating that increasing the use of electric vehicles is a corporate goal, alongside of, or even more important than, making money, then this move could be perfectly aligned with the stated corporate goals which the investors bought into, even if it can be proven that this move decreased share value.