zlacker

>>gkober+(OP)
There is no legal covenant here. I imagine Tesla’s definition of “good faith” is “we evaluate on a case by case basis”.

Which amounts to “if we like you” and “we reserve the right”. If they wanted these patents to be open source, they would license them explicitly.

>>mwsher+W2
Anything short of a legal document setting out which rights are waived and which are reserved, and under what circumstances, is just PR. No company is going to use a Tesla-patented technology without that guarantee.

>>redthr+y6
No company is going to use a Tesla-patented technology without that guarantee.

Lots of people are saying this, but I don't understand it. My understanding (IANAL) is that when the CEO publishes something like this on the company's official web site, it becomes completely impossible for the company to win any future patent suits due to promissory estoppel.

Musk has effectively stuffed all of the company's patents into his office shredder. Good for him.

(Edit: He has also intentionally lowered the market value of the company by a certain amount, which is interesting.)