Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday that newcomers could use his company's patents. He was confident that sharing the patents could fast-track the production of electric cars without hurting his business.
"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," Musk announced in a blog post.
Known patents that Musk would like to share included the electric powertrains and the supercharger network used for fast charging of the electric cars. The electric cars occupied only one percent of the market so the threat was considerably small, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced," he added, "but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world's factories every day."
According to Businessweek, Tesla would benefit from sharing its hundreds of patents and thousands more to come by forming important partnerships. The company was reportedly negotiating with BMW in sharing the costs of building additional recharging stations and huge battery factories.
The move gained mixed reactions from analysts. Some considered it positive while some worried that it could be a risk.
"Even if other competitors copy Tesla's design, Tesla still gets to sell them batteries, and that's pretty awesome. Tesla's decision isn't entirely altruistic," said Jacob Sherkow, patent law expert at the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School, to L.A. Times.
Thilo Koslowski, an analyst with Gartner Inc., expressed the downside of the shared patents to L.A. Times: "If you open up all your books to everyone, it means you all are fighting a war with the same weapons."
But Musk was quick to defend his decision to prevent investors from worrying.
"It doesn't really harm Tesla but helps the industry," Musk said on a call with Reuters, "and I think actually it will help Tesla, mostly with respect to attracting and motivating the world's best technical talent."
