Interestingly, try navigating through – here's the link to page 14: https://www.google.com/?tbm=pts&gws_rd=ssl#q=inassignee%3A%2.... I remember reading or being told that Google only estimates how many results there are, and refines the estimate as you navigate further down the list. As of page 14 there seem to be only 133 results; a far cry from 6,430.

Apparently they don't estimate, they inflate how many results there are... For example, I never seen a case when their "estimate" was lower then the actual number of results.

An upper bound is a valid estimation. "Inflating" assumes that they have a good approximation, and that they arbitrarily increase it. I don't think that they do that.

The choice to take an upper bound (which will systematically err on the high side) and call it an "estimate" (which is not expected to have large, systematic error) inflates the numbers.

> An upper bound is a valid estimation.

Most people don't expect upper bounds, though, when talking about estimations. I for one would appreciate a less-than or less-than-or-equal sign when this is truly an upper bound, as it gives me a better idea of what to expect of the actual number of results in relation to the estimation.

> Most people don't expect upper bounds, though, when talking about estimations.

What do you mean? If all I know about a number X is that it is an estimate for Y, I would expect X to be an upper bound for Y 50% of the time and a lower bound 50% of the time.

...if you don't know which way, it's not a boundary at all.

This is not like IBM making some of its less important patents available to the community. This is huge.

How many times in the past has a private company opened up its core patents for everyone to use? There aren't that many precedences.

Not many people have been in the same boat as Tesla, a young company in a trillion dollar industry with limited players.

What Tesla is saying, here are my patents, let's start building electrical fuel stations arround the world, i can do a lot of them by myselve (and i'm doing that), but i don't have enough budget to do it arround the world.

It seems clear to me, that Tesla's biggest obstacle for electrical cars is electrical fuel stations and not other car dealers, because Tesla dominates the electrical car "scene" right now (personal opinion)... But i don't consider one , because there aren't any electrical fuel station arround here (Belgium) - although they are working on that as fast as they can, checkout http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger and scroll between "open right now" and "winter 2014-2015".

I think it's a good business move from Tesla.. I'm just curious what happens when a car manufacturer takes the patents, adds one of their own patents and then unites with a other car manufacturers.... Leaving Tesla in the dark, is that possible or are there some limits to "opening" their patents?

You know, that's a good point. Apparently you could build charging stations, using their plug tech, without paying royalties.

That's huge. And smart.

Yeah, but we all know selling cars are mostly marketing :D. Tesla will have a field day if the other manufacturers do that. It's a risk, but it's a calculated risk with a huge amount of rewards for reasonable risk, which is exactly how smaller companies compete with the incumbents. No CEO from a big auto company could make this move, but Musk could, and did.

Let's say a manufacturer goes all in on the deal with Tesla and he brings out a superior car to Tesla (let's say Audi for example)...

Then people who want to choose an electric car, will think about Audi and Tesla.

It's not Tesla that is trying to get in the game, he's already in it... But are they willing to roll your dice against Tesla by competing him on popularity of products and joining him on aggressively providing fuel stations (hell, you can name it Audi Fuel Zone, if you want).

You could break out a huge market in no time, it wouldn't be bad to team up with Tesla to break open the market.. Although i wouldn't like to be Mercedes (for example), produce a electric car and say to my clients: hey, you can tank at a Audi Fuel Zone or we don't have an electric fuel stations compatible with our technology :)

None the less, electric cars are coming.

More of a "fuel free zone" than a "fuel zone."

In a sense, electricity is the fuel of the car... But then again, i could be mistaking.

Got me on that one :)

Not intended to be a gotcha. That would be a silly one. (Downvotes on gp post: Now we see the humorless side of HN)

In 1956 AT&T opened all of it's patents to everyone without royalties to settle an antitrust suit, including the transistor.

http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx1036.pdf

Core element there being "to settle an anti-trust suit".

It's helpful to keep in mind that AT&T operated under anti-trust watch from 1917 through 1984, with the 1950s action being among the most significant.

It was also responsible for keeping AT&T out of the computing market, which meant that when AT&T created an operating system, it had something it couldn't sell, so it gave it away.

You may have heard of this, it was called "UNIX".

Didn't know that! That turned out well. To the innovators go the spoils.

The opposite, actually. This is about giving the spoils to everyone who didn't invent the transistor.

the spoils to everyone who innovated on the transistor.

That's what I meant. THose that generated the most value on the transistor, got the spoils - eg Fairchild, Intel, etc

Not necessarily, unless they also got patents on their innovations.

You're aware that it's possible to make money on an invention without patenting it. First to market advantage, a foothold in the market, continuing brand recognition as the go-to source for that product, a head start on the next round of innovation, increased sales across the industry as the product becomes more valuable to customers, increased sales of complementary products and services, etc.

Or just keeping it a trade secret, like WD-40.

That was a calculation, assuming that they would loose more in the suit than in opening up it's patents, this isn't the same at all, though it is a direct response to the question.

Volvo did this with the seat belt.

Volvo did that for modern seatbelts in the interest of public safety (and IIRC for every other security-related invention they had patented)

133 seems about right. 136 by my count of the Tesla patent wall via Steve Jurvetson.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/14405402742/