Posts Tagged: "hypocrisy"

Is Elon Musk a Modern Day Rasputin?

Musk also continues to be exposed by news headlines. Twice Musk has delayed his own deadline to reach the 5,000-per-week production goal he has set for Tesla’s Model 3. He’s broken promises not only to his shareholders but also his workforce, 9 percent of which he recently laid off in an attempt to make Tesla into a profitable company. At the time of this writing, Tesla shares were in the $310 price range despite predictions from major investment bank Goldman Sachs that Tesla may need to raise up to $10 billion in capital over the next two years to remain in operation. In late July, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk asked some of Tesla’s suppliers to refund payments made by the company going back to 2016 in order for Tesla to reach profitability. This news caused a major surge in Tesla credit-default swaps, which now indicate that the company has a 42 percent chance of missing a debt payment in the next five years. Forget meeting production deadlines, Tesla might not have enough cash to keep its doors open within a few short years. Somehow it just doesn’t matter. It is almost as if the more Musk fails the greater his legend grows, and for reasons that make little sense the higher his stock price soars. 

When Will Wall Street Wake Up to Elon Musk’s Broken Promises?

Reports about Musk’s talks with Cortica comes one day after Goldman Sachs analyst David Tamberrino affirmed his sell rating for Tesla stock on his expectation that Tesla stock would drop by 30 percent over the next six months because of production issues… On the same day that Goldman Sachs reaffirmed its sell rating on Tesla stock, Musk posted a video to Instagram, which is emblematic of the CEO’s Alfred E. Neuman-esque style of response to any perceived corporate turbulence. The video shows Musk in a bar in Jerusalem pouring flaming absinthe. Musk’s Instagram declaration that “Everything’s better with fire …” smacks of the same “What, me worry?” attitude that has allowed him to navigate uncertainty in meeting production goals without eroding shareholder confidence.

Tesla continues to rack up patents despite Elon Musk’s supposed distaste for patents

For someone who avoids patents “whenever possible,” Musk and his companies sure do seek patents on a lot of innovations. So why can’t he just be honest about his motivations? Or why doesn’t he come out and explain that innovation demands patents and it just isn’t realistic to invest many millions, or in his case sometimes billions, into research and development if you cannot obtain and exercise exclusive rights? That is, after all, perfectly honest and true. You can’t invest in what you can’t own, and Musk knows that. For some reason he just doesn’t seem all that interested in his fans and shareholders realizing that undeniable truth.

The Supreme Court should follow their own Halo advice in §101 patent eligibility decisions

Essentially, the Supreme Court told the Federal Circuit that they needed remedial reading lessons. The statute is clear: “may” means district courts have discretion. The Supreme Court also seemed instruct the Federal Circuit to stop making stuff up that clearly isn’t found within the statute. It is truly ironic, even downright funny, how the Supreme Court can so clearly see that the Federal Circuit is not being true to the simple, easy to understand, straight-forward terms of a statute but at the same time lack the capacity to similarly see that they are themselves doing the very same thing. If intellectual honesty means anything the Supreme Court would hold themselves to the same standard and stop applying judicial exceptions to patent eligibility that enjoy no textual support in the statute.

Musk’s Tesla does poor job of avoiding patents, gains 27 this year alone

Musk maintains that he has avoided patents since leaving a business venture in 1999 but we’ve been pointing out how companies in which he holds a large interest have been acquiring IP and filing new patent applications themselves. In fact, as the IP portfolio analysis tools from Innography show us, Tesla has earned 27 patents thus far in 2015, making it pretty clear that Elon Musk is doing an awful job of avoiding patents, which really has to make you wonder what is behind his anti-patent rhetoric.