Elon Musk Makes Tesla Patents Open Source

Elon Musk, Tesla Motors’ CEO, pulled a great PR move earlier this month. The leading U.S. luxury electric car company publicly announced on June 12 that it is viewing all of its Tesla patents as open source.

The statement by the green vehicle manufacturer, posted on its website, addresses the growing concern of many technology entrepreneurs and new innovators, young and old, that holders of key patents, specifically “patent trolls” (holding companies that buy valuable patents with the business strategy of filing and settling lawsuits) are stifling innovation. Mark Cuban has been particularly public in his disdain for the U.S. patent system as it exists today.

Up there with Steve Jobs and Mark Cuban, Mr. Musk is about as high profile as they come in the world of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs. Personally I think of him as the heir apparent to Steve Jobs, over, say, Jack Dorsey, in terms of disruption. IMHO Musk is also the odds on favorite in terms of “cool factor” where new tech products that I can’t afford are concerned. Tesla has been battling the traditional dealer model which forbids a manufacturer from selling direct to consumer in some markets in the U.S., many new vehicle entrepreneurs, including Paul Elio of Elio Motors, believe this model is outdated.

The post, published on Tesla’s blog, calls out several reasons for the move toward applying “the open source philosophy to our patents:”

• Tesla was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport
• Using intellectual property “landmines” in the way of others who want to build sustainable vehicles conflicts with objective No. 1
• Tesla doesn’t want to participate in stifling sustainable technology progress (while enriching those in the legal profession as opposed to the original inventors)
• Technology leadership is not defined by patents, but by the ability of a company to attract the most talented engineers.

This is a great PR move, even if the actual wording of the statement is vague enough to allow Tesla to sue a competitor if they really did something, for lack of a better word, “dickish.”

Here is a copy of Elon Musk’s post:

“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.

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.

At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.

At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.

Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.

We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.

Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”

Editor’s Note: This article was originally posted on Poplar Network, http://www.poplarnetwork.com/news/elon-musk-makes-tesla-patents-open-source