Musk on patents27 Feb 2021 09:18
find myself in the unaccustomed position of quoting Elon Musk (pictured below), the chief executive of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). In 2014, he wrote on the company’s corporate 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.”
Tesla still files patents, and the small print restricts Tesla’s technology to companies that are as open as Tesla or companies that are not, but are prepared to license its intellectual property. Tesla seems to think patents are valuable, but the people and business culture that invent the intellectual property are more valuable.