This is very significant for Panasonic's new direction. They now partner with a startup that takes on a IPR policy radically different from the Panasonic of the past. Panasonic's R&D engineers used to be measured internally by the amount of patents filed and the company had a large presence in every significant patent pool. In addition it means that one of Panasonic's key manufacturing expertise will be located overseas, which is also a radical departure to the mindset of keeping core manufacturing as 'black boxes' in Japan. However this may still apply to components that are integrated in the Gigafactory.