Tesla Goes Open Source: Elon Musk Releases Patents To 'Good Faith' Use

Elon Musk has always been a rebel. Now he’s an open source rebel.

While many in Silicon Valley have railed against patent wars in recent years, and some have lobbied Washington to reform patent law, Tesla’s taking an unprecedented step of opening all its electric car patents to outside use.

In a blog post on Thusday, Musk said Tesla has removed the patents decorating the wall of the company’s Palo Alto headquarters — a symbolic move to coincide with this announcement. Tesla’s billionaire cofounder and CEO writes that the company “will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”

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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.

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.

Full blog post from Tesla Motors homepage: All Our Patent Are Belong to You

To be honest, this news piece took my breath away for a second. I could not agree more with this. The current patent system is rather holding back the innovation, than accelerating the technological progress. I do not say, there should not be certain protection for inventors, although definitely not in the current way, where too often patents are used as suppressing the opponents (smaller companies usually), suppressing the knowledge and all in the name of additional profits...

I have always been an admirer of Tesla Motors as well as Elon Musk and this only strengthens their position in my eyes.Of course, in the end Tesla is a corporation like any other, having the main intention of creating maximum profit, but the way are doing it - the way they are innovating the industry, thinking big and in the end creating a win-win for everybody- is remarkable and something I highly respect.

An incredibly bold move. Only one way to tell.

Watch the share price.

a reply to: Snarl
This is a fantastic move as well as being very bold and will instill trust in the company, hopefully sending their share price higher

Great move. Great Company. Great man.

Capitalism at it's finest. You can be innovative, make billions, try to better mankind and try to leave your name in the history books forever all at the same time. Brilliant.

originally posted by: Snarl
An incredibly bold move. Only one way to tell.

Watch the share price.

Jumped from 206 to 224 between my posts. LOL

a reply to: Cabin

That totally makes sense, the guy is a billionaire, patents are only good for making money, the guy doesnt need anymore. The curious thing is if the inventors of the patents get reimbursed, or if they came up with them via the corporation so elon musk technically owned them? Anyway, this is how a true civil society would work, or how good rich people would behave.