• By Elon Musk, CEO
• June 12, 2014

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.

是也乎

这是历史的一刻,只有原文,才能体现和见证那种豪情!

在上篇文章: 珠的自白:29 编程不一定人人都要会

Linus Torvalds 曰了:

知识产权这个词应该被禁止. 知识和产权这两个词就不应该被搭配在一起. 不管出于何种原因,这方面最主要的矛盾就在于”专利”.

在现阶段美国的不够完备的专利法律体系下,我并不认为是公司出了错. 大多数情况下,公司都是在博弈.

专利本身就是一个很奇怪的存在,专利局无法否定它. 假使有人否定专利的意义而不去申请,随之而来的是更麻烦的事儿 (因为公司会对文件进行改良,以期望其通过专利申请). 公司都希望其所拥有的专利定义模糊,难以界定,这似乎更是对判决是否侵犯专利这一诉讼过程的挑战.
所以对专利本身的投入,已经远远不及打官司的投入.

另外,推荐看一下纪录片«软件专利的荒谬性» 就能进一步深深的明白 软件专利 是种蛋疼到何种境界的事儿了.

现在 Musk 也曰了:

俺不跟你们玩儿了,
丫挺的乍也玩不过俺了,
这忒没意思了,
所以,大家也都甭玩了,
俺们换种玩法儿吧!

什么是改进世界? 这才是!

巡阅

• 150113 Zoom.Quiet checked