Toyota Joins Tesla In Freeing A Bunch Of Key Patents
from the good-for-innovation dept
Last June, Elon Musk and Tesla made some news in freeing up Tesla's patents, hoping to jumpstart the market for electric cars. As we pointed out at the time, this highlighted how patents can, and often do, hold back innovation -- and we hoped that others might take notice. It's taken a while, but at CES this week, Toyota also announced plans to free patents, focusing on the 5,680 patents (including pending patents) it has on fuel cell drive systems. The details still matter, but Toyota says that the patents are all available, "royalty free." The patents seem to cover the whole stack of things necessary to develop hydrogen fuel cell cars -- including the patents for hydrogen stations.Of course, the idea, as with Tesla, is that the market needs to be jumpstarted, and that means a lot of companies working together to help build the infrastructure and educate the market. That's done best by sharing the information and letting everyone compete on the actual execution. But, of course, that's what we've been arguing should be the case for lots of technology areas as well. The patents are only serving to hold back so many markets, not allowing companies to build the best possible products they can, and thus limiting overall innovation and adoption.
Hopefully more companies -- and not just automakers -- will start to recognize why this is such a good idea, not just for their own business, but for innovation in general.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: competition, cooperation, ecosystems, fuel cells, hydrogen fuel cells, innovation, patents
Companies: tesla, toyota
Reader Comments
The First Word
“jumpstart
hoping to jumpstart the market for electric cars.You can't jumpstart an electric car!
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Tesla indeed jump started the market. And Mr. Edison had his "joke" returned many times over. And we all benefitted from Mr. Tesla's gift to Mr. Westinghouse. So it can work. Let's hope that it always does work out for the good of mankind, and not just for one man. I am reminded of the gift to the world of the polio vaccine. So thanks to Tesla and Toyota. Let the sun shine in! Peace, love and brotherhood to all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Yep, it's the same over 100 years later alright. There's plenty of room if we put effort in them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Haven't you heard? They don't use lead any more -- these days, they're using lithium.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Battery technology has come on quite a bit since then. Electric motors have advanced significantly too. The combination of Lithium batteries, rare earth magnets and brushless motors has revolutionised many fields. The model aircraft scene, for example, is unrecogniseable compared to 20 years ago (where do you think all those drones come from).
However, based on my model aircraft experience I would say that electric cars are still not quite there yet. What works at 2hp for 10 minutes doesn't yet provide 20 hp for 4hrs with the same level of convenience.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Different market. Those make/models are for the short range trips of limited duration. Example being the housewife who needs to go to the corner grocer to get food for tonight. Or the stay-at-home mom/pop taking their children to school, even if said school is 7 houses away (don't laugh, I actually saw this: not 7 miles, not 7 blocks, 7 houses away from the school and they're driving their children there).
Now when the various manufacturers can put out vehicles for the every day service business or delivery business then you'll see some innovation in battery storage technology. These vehicles will have to go as much as 500 miles in one charge with a 1+ ton payload, and recharge in less than 8 hours. Those businesses with overnight lodging requirements will have to wait until adequate charging infrastructure is in place.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
I'd totally own a Prius but we still need further development in many fronts.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Brushless is 1880's tech....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The same thing was said about internal combustion engines powering carriages not all that long ago. Horses were way better. In fact, they failed repeatedly before they managed to catch on.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Diesel
Asthmatics who inhaled diesel exhaust fumes for two hours in a study booth didn’t just get itchy eyes and a headache while breathing in the polluted air.
They also experienced effects on a micro level as genes associated with inflammatory and oxidative stress processes were altered.
Those are the findings from five researchers at the University of B.C. who put 16 asthma patients in a cubicle, exposing them — on separate occasions — to filtered air and diesel exhaust and later comparing blood samples collected before and after exposures.
Diesel exhaust induced DNA changes but filtered air did not, according to lead researcher Christopher Carlsten, a respirologist and associate professor in the division of respiratory medicine.
The study by the researchers at UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health is published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology. It showed that just two hours of exposure to diesel exhaust fumes led to biological changes that meant some genes were switched on while others turned off. The air quality during the diesel fume exposures is said to be comparable to a Beijing highway or shipping ports in British Columbia.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Diesel
Sorry, but this is another pet peeve of mine: saying "X damages DNA" all by itself is completely meaningless. A huge amount of (completely natural) things you eat, drink, and touch every day damages DNA. Many common drugs such as aspirin damages DNA. Getting hit really hard damages DNA. DNA is a fragile molecule that gets damaged very easily. Our bodies have mechanisms to repair this damage, so in the vast majority of cases, it is a harmless thing.
What would be meaningful is if the study identified that the particular changes noted were of the sort that are concerning. Not having read the report, it may have done this and has just been summarized badly. In any case, there's nothing meaningful about just saying there were DNA changes and leaving it at that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: That was then,
Hint: Maybe because they are smarter than you will ever be?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
The Wrights' preoccupation with the legal issue hindered their development of new aircraft designs, and by 1910 Wright aircraft were inferior to those made by other firms in Europe. Indeed, aviation development in the U.S. was suppressed to such an extent that when the country entered World War I no acceptable American-designed aircraft were available, and U.S. forces were compelled to use French machines.
Patents being used to stifle competition, eliminating any innovation locally, while inventors in other countries make large strides in improving the original creation due to being able to avoid the insane mess.
'The more things change' indeed...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
jumpstart
You can't jumpstart an electric car!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Or in other words: these patents aren't actually being released, they're just being licensed without charge, and many (most?) of them only temporarily so.
This doesn't seem to rise to the same level of recognition of the purpose of patents, and the value of releasing patents, as what Tesla did last year.
(Of course, even that wasn't actually a release into the public domain, just a promise not to enforce the patents as long as they were used "in good faith" - without specifying what that might mean.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Be careful at the briges...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not being altruistic
As many of the small manufacturers of automobiles start to use and make improvements to Toyota's original designs the prices of engine parts will go down. As improvements occur Toyota's R&D people will be able to cherry pick amongst what works best and make improvements of their own.
The oil industry is going to have to make major changes in their operations. They will have to push their R&D people to figure out how to extract Hydrogen economically from water. And how to do it without leaving mountains of impurities behind.
The next thing they're going to need to figure out is how to deliver, store and safely pump the Hydrogen into the car's "gas tank"
Best yet, this is not limited to just autos and cars. Now that the patents are out there, there is potential for this technology to be implemented in ships, aircraft, large scale and portable power generation (abayo genshiryoku hatsudensho) and just about everything that currently makes use of an engine built by Toyota.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not being altruistic
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Not being altruistic
[ link to this | view in chronology ]