Posts Tagged: "Tesla"

In many ways, 2015 has been the year of the automobile, especially in the tech world. Throughout the course of the year we’ve noted a great deal of business and technological developments that have been reshaping the entire vehicle manufacturing sector. Gone are the days that the market is completely dominated by names such as General Motors Company, Ford Motor Company or Toyota Motor Corp. As 2015 draws to a close, these traditional automaker behemoths are seeing encroachment on their position from some unusual names, especially those residing in Silicon Valley.

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.

To Musk’s credit, he has not denied that his companies received substantial government assistance, and it seems as though he’s never refuted the amount of money he has received, which one reporter for the Los Angeles Times pegged as high as $4.9 billion when accounting for public assistance to any of Musk’s companies. In Musk’s mind, the benefits that his corporations pose in the form of new age technologies and well-paying jobs more than make up for the public investment into his business activities. He’s also keen to point out that his companies would still be in business without government assistance, a point that is nearly impossible to prove. Further, he sought to deflect inquiry by pointing out that the incentives his company has received “are a tiny, tiny, pittance compared to what the oil and gas industry receives every year.”