Elon Musk to give away his patents on elec car to auto industry

[DarthTom]

Well this doesn't happen often. He's giving away patents developed for his car. I'm sure there are many, many pissed off stockholders in Tesla today that he's done this.

ATL Biz

Elon Musk often wins because he plays like a guy who has nothing to lose.
The 42-year-old techpreneur and PayPal co-founder is simultaneously disrupting two entrenched industries — automobiles and space.
Musk, who has ambitions of colonizing Mars, is CEO of SpaceX, which has developed lower cost, recyclable rockets that can carry human and other cargo to space.
Equally ambitious is Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA), Musk’s proxy for keeping the planet from choking on hydrocarbons.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based automaker has built an electron-fueled sedan that can outsprint a Porsche. Even more impressive, the Model S can go 265-mile on a single charge, giving it near gasoline-car range.
But, Musk realizes he cannot save our blue dot single-handedly — especially with a sticker price that tops $100,000.
To help incentivize the auto industry — including his competitors — to join his crusade, Musk is taking an unusual step for a publicly traded company.
He's giving away Tesla's intellectual property — open sourcing what must be hundreds, if not thousands, of patents that Tesla owns on its revolutionary battery and charging technologies.
Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use the company's technology, Musk wrote on his blog Thursday.
"Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters," Musk wrote. "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."
That move, which didn’t sit well with investors who jettisoned the stock, is in the spirit of Tesla's focus on accelerating the advent of sustainable transport.

 

[farmkid]

Very interesting. I applaud him for his ideals and acting according to them in spite of the potential personal cost. I'm concerned, though, that if his investors run from him, that it will hurt his companies and limit or kill his ability to use his ideas for good. It is likely also, that it will make it harder for him to develop future ideas.

 

[Maxillius]

Very interesting. I applaud him for his ideals and acting according to them in spite of the potential personal cost. I'm concerned, though, that if his investors run from him, that it will hurt his companies and limit or kill his ability to use his ideas for good. It is likely also, that it will make it harder for him to develop future ideas.

Tesla, as a company, already wasn't doing all that well and if it weren't for the fact that Musk is already a multi-billionaire, it would've been down the crapper already. I suspect he's only done that to free those patents from patent law oblivion as when a company folds its patents are *extremely* hard to free, even by the former company's owners.

 

[sojourner]

Surely you have Tesla confused with someone else? It's not only surviving but thriving.

Perhaps you're thinking of Fisker Karma?

 

[publiusr]

There is an old saying: "always use the other guy's money."

Case in point SLS vs. BFR.

Now the idea most folks have is that SLS is wasteful, etc, etc.

But SLS money is to go for pad mods, perhaps new pad construction at KSC
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34015.msg1209146#msg1209146

Any money NASA spends on that--Space X doesn't have to.

Same here. By opening up patents, Musk allows R&D work to be effectively outsourced to GM, with its more constant resources.

Then Musk can look at that and perhaps improve upon it--and improving an existing technology is usually less painful than developing it from scratch. That's tough.

So you let someone else run with the ball while you catch your breath.

We see that now with what is left of the Very Light Jet movement. The air taxi model is dead, a lot of debt built up has been discharged, so whatever is left is picked up for a song--and then low level sales can be had--with all the risk being taken by someone else.

If you try to patent everything--lawyers get the money--not engineers.

Electric cars need all the help they can get.