Open Source Patents: Opening Up Automotive Technology

Last week Tesla announced that it will open source its entire portfolio of electric vehicle patents.   It promised not to initiate patent lawsuits against anyone using their technology “in good faith.”  By opening up the technology, Musk hopes to jump-start growth in the electronic vehicle industry.  It also will make it easier for Tesla to build partnerships and alliances with other companies.  Tesla, for example, has talked with BMW about partnering to build recharging stations and infrastructure.

Elon Musk, entrepreneur and inventor and CEO/CTO of Tesla, wrote that “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.  We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”

Musk said that “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. ”

Will Oremus, reporter at Slate, wrote that “the obstacles to Tesla’s success aren’t the Nissan Leaf and the BMW i3—they’re the constraints of technology, cost, infrastructure, and customer expectations. The more money is put into electric batteries, the cheaper and more powerful they’ll become. ”

R. Polk Wagner, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, said that “it is important to understand that, in many ways, patents are a tradeoff.  Just because you have patents doesn’t mean you get anything out of them, necessarily.”

Aaron Levie,  CEO of file-storing company Box, said that “by opening its patents, Tesla rightly realises it’s better to be the best product in a large industry than the only product in a niche one,” observed Silicon Valley entrepreneur Inc.