Tesla va partager ses brevets en «Open Source»

Le fabricant automobile américain de véhicules de luxe électriques Tesla a décidé de partager ses brevets dans l'espoir de favoriser une augmentation de la production de voitures électriques, a annoncé jeudi son PDG Elon Musk, dans un blogue.

«Hier encore il y avait un mur de brevets de Tesla dans le hall d'entrée de notre siège de Palo Alto. Ce n'est plus le cas. Ils ont été enlevés (...) pour faire avancer la technologie des véhicules électriques», écrit M. Musk.

Il indique que Tesla ne poursuivra pas en justice les entreprises, ni les personnes qui utiliseraient ses technologies.

Cette décision s'explique, selon Elon Musk, par le fait que les grands constructeurs automobiles n'ont vraiment pas investi le créneau des voitures moins polluantes.

En conséquence, le patron du groupe automobile californien espère que ce geste convaincra quelques-uns.

«Nous croyons que Tesla, les autres constructeurs de véhicules électriques et le monde gagneront à avoir une plateforme commune de ces nouvelles technologies qui évoluent très vite», conclut-il.


Source: Agence France-Presse

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All Our Patent Are Belong To You
By Elon Musk, CEO


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.

See Anything You Like Here? Go Ahead And Copy It

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.

Il sera intéressant de voir quel manufacturier répondra à cette offre...