I Don't Love Corporate Types but Elon Musk is something else.

We know Mr. Musk is waging war in the fight for clean air and renewables in the personal transportation arena, and he is doing it in a unique way that he hopes will benefit his agenda. If he has any ulterior motives for his paradigm shift, I do not fault them and I sincerely hope it will only serve to catapult Mr. Musk to the top of the transportation game while simultaneously helping to destroy the idiotic, moronic, of-benefit-only-to-lawyers-and-government patent system.

The deal is for anyone to freely use the Tesla electric car patents while promising to allow Tesla to use any patents developed by anyone taking advantage of Tesla's "generosity." I put it in quotes for obvious reasons and because I tend heavily towards skepticism; but, to my way of thinking, we desperately need a different system.

While I commend Senators Leahy and Smith and their 2011 congressional act to cut fees by 42%, it is still too high for what the inventor gets. I would rather see it under $100 for 12 years and issued automatically. What you are getting is certification that you submitted the patent on a certain date. If you encounter an infringing party, you can then do what you would normally have done--you sue them in court.

This idea of Mr. Musk could turn out to be a real game changer. It's brilliantly simple. You use my patents and I get to use yours. It remains to be seen what will happen when the lawyers get involved in the game, though. They no doubt already are and further involvement guarantees that a simple idea gets perverted into something even more complex than what we have now.

I call upon Mr. Musk to also pursue my plan as it complements his plan very well.


Tesla Motors offers all its patents for good faith use - CNET