Tesla Motors recently released their patents so that anyone or company is free to use them on a good faith basis. Their hope is that other companies will help to accelerate the electric car industry and make it more acceptably used by the public.
Here’s what we found interesting… so many companies and people spend large amounts of time and money protecting and defending their patents, detracting their resources from the task at hand.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla may be thinking the same thing given this excerpt from his blog, “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.”