In a stunning move and quite frankly one that has given me renewed hope in the automotive industry, Tesla motors announced in their blog that they are making their patents available as open source to the world. In other words the patents they have will be made available to the public and they promise not to pursue legal action.

This is a huge move to further the technology in the electric car field. The altruistic move hopefully allows other people in the field to develop more zero emission vehicles which production shows is at a critical juncture. So hopefully this move will allow others to quickly develop new alternative energy vehicles in an accelerated manner.

[su_quote cite=”Elon Musk, CEO Tesla Motors” url=”http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you”]When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.[/su_quote]

So hooray for Tesla and their willingness to share their patents and technology for the betterment of the zero emission vehicle industry. And here is to hope, that other will follow their example.