All our patent are belong to you (2014) | Hacker News Reader

All our patent are belong to you (2014)

tesla.com

48 pointsandsoitis24 comments

https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...

Except the actual terms state that:

"A party is "acting in good faith" for so long as such party and its related or affiliated companies have not: asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla" [emphasis mine]

So Tesla agrees to not pursue you for patent infringement as long as you agree to not pursue Tesla for patent and copyright and trademark infringement and trade secret misappropriation. What a fine and upstanding fair agreement.

And, just in case it is not clear it also states:

"marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so."

which is a explicit carveout for Tesla's copyright and trademark even though they demand you give up yours.

[edit]: Added trade secret misappropriation as a reply mentioned since that is traditionally considered a intellectual property right as well.

Should probably include trade secrets for good measure

reads to me like "our lawn is for everyone as we want to see the technology succeed, but those who try to crap on it will be asked to leave."

what's wrong with that?

Because it states, "patent or other intellectual property right" for Tesla, but only "patent right" for everybody else. If you are really "opening" your patents or intellectual property then you would just have a symmetric agreement like patents for both, or intellectual property for both. You would not have a ridiculously asymmetric agreement that legalizes your usage of industrial espionage or counterfeiting.

For that matter, the pledge is transitive, but only uniquely privileges Tesla intellectual property rights:

"(i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla"

"(ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment"

See how they clearly highlight different rights. The second term is a symmetric patent pledge, everybody equally agrees to not sue each other or others over patents. But the first term says Tesla is more equal than others and you can not sue them for anything even if they steal your trade secrets or literally make counterfeits of your products.

you are correct that it is not symmetric, but i suspect they wanted to avoid weird situations where they find themselves publicly obligated to pull patents as a result of non-trivial non-patent ip disputes between third parties.

That does not even make sense. That might be why they would not transitively require non-enforcement of all intellectual property. It does not support uniquely granting themselves massive additional rights to commit intellectual property infringement against all other signatories.

Your logic would only be sound if Tesla agreed to symmetrically not enforce any of its intellectual property rights if others would not enforce them against Tesla, while still only requiring transitive non-enforcement of patent rights. That would trivially carve out third party disputes on non-patent IP while still holding Tesla to a higher standard (and others against Tesla only). Instead, the pledge as written grants Tesla a level of privilege that is hard to overstate with respect to intellectual property.

This is not some sort of oopsie oversight. Tesla has tons of highly paid lawyers that can work out clear terms and Elon Musk personally proposed the idea and signed off on that wording while actively marketing Tesla as taking some sort of moral high ground. The specific wording of that pledge is a inexcusable, scummy, deliberate betrayal of the spirit of a patent pledge. They deserve negative morality points for their intentional deception and misuse of terminology meant to imply a moral stance they deliberately betray.

they want to protect their brand, but they don't want to get into the business of protecting those that belong to others, from others.

they are not going to engage in malfeasance, they have spent too much building the brand that they seek to protect.

i'm not a huge elon fan, but this seems pretty obvious to me.

What you are describing are the standard protections of trademarks (brand protection). You get those if you do not waive your trademarks which is the default.

The Tesla patent pledge requires everybody to explicitly grant Tesla, and only Tesla, the right to violate their trademarks (and all other IP) freely without repercussion. Tesla is not “protecting” themselves with that clause, they are giving themselves a unlimited malfeasance license.

This is a “oh by the way, I am allowed to unilaterally steal all your stuff” clause. There is zero justifiable reason for such wording. They can just not give themselves that additional power.

If they had even the slightest intention of a fair pledge they would have only needed to have clause (ii). They deliberately chose not to. Their patent pledge is a disgrace.

"good faith" has meaning in the california business code and it would not stand up in court if they attempted to abuse semantics in the absurd way you describe. their text is abundantly clear: you can use the ideas in their patents if you are using them in good faith and are not law trolling.

The "you can use Teslas ideas" part of the contract is not what's being discussed. What parent is talking about is the rights you must give up in order to gain this right.

I wonder if SpaceX will also open up their portfolio now that they have also been filing and being granted many patents in recent years(1), as NASA did in 2016(2) and as Tesla did in 2014. I think it would help other space startups innovate further toward the SpaceX mission of making humans interplanetary, much like Tesla opening up their portfolio helped to progress sustainable transport.

https://insights.greyb.com/spacex-patent/

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-makes-dozens-of-paten...

Most of the real IP is hidden behind ITAR.

Even if you believed Tesla/Elon in 2014, you'd still be parking your business over a trapdoor that could be pulled open at any time in the future. It's like anything a leader ever says: They can mean it sincerely at that point in time, but they can't answer for the future when they've moved on or sold the business or the environment has changed.

I started my career in the chip business. All large semiconductor shops realised in the late 60s/ early 70s that they could destroy any competition via patent lawsuits - TI has the transistor, IBM the CPU, Intel the microprocessor, multiple fab process inventions, etc , etc. So they generally agreed patent swap agreements (not sure if this was via an organisation, or bilaterals) to avoid just giving all their money to lawyers.

Today you write a patent as a defensive weapon (you sue me, I’ll sue you) or as a way for your start up to have residual value when it dies on the vine and your VCs sell the IP to a troll. So, seems that Tesla has enough IP to avoid other car firms from taking them out (probably GM has patent on using 4 wheels) … but no large firm / real competitor will dance unless they follow the chip business “all in” model.

Now it's all trade secrets instead of patents. Finding out how a Tesla works is all uphill. Not just right to repair. What the cars send to the mothership is a secret. Voice? Video? Everywhere you've been?

Opening up the NACS standard is nice too. They have a wall at the Deer Creek office full of patents underneath the next "all our patent are belong to you".

NACS standard is the biggest thing. It's got the best infrastructure, so it's good for consumers (lots of places to charge quickly), good for manufacturers (can sell cars with simple charging solutions), and good for Tesla (able to sell electricity at a premium).

They could also.. just have followed CCS in the first place and you people wouldn't have had this problem to begin with.

Yeah but from a consumer perspective the svelte NACS connector is vastly more pleasant to use than the bulky CCS one.

If every company started doing this, their lawyers hair are going to catch fire. This is sooooo amazing and kudos to tesla for leading the way!!

It's a 10 year old post. Facebook was doing a similar PR stunt around the same time. It's already proven to be nowhere near the benevolent gesture it appears to be.

> It's a 10 year old post. Facebook was doing a similar PR stunt around the same time.

Does Facebook, like Tesla, still host their statement on their website?

Discussed at the time:

All Our Patent Are Belong To You - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7884560 - June 2014 (314 comments)

Ha! Love this post.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com