Featured Bogus Nicola/Tesla Patent Infringement Suit

This is interesting news, as I'm sure Tesla's legal strategy was to stall long enough for their patents to be awarded. And it takes way too long for patents to be awarded!!! The entire patent process needs to be updated in a way that's faster, as well in a way that awards triple damages as well as rescinds all rights of patent rights trolls who are not making use of their overly-broad patents for any other purpose than using the threat of legal proceedings to unlawfully extract cash in settlements. We also need to broaden the terms of fair-use if it's in the public's interest too. Patent holders intentionally holding back beneficial technology because they profit at everyone else be denied use of the new technology should be severely punished.

As for @Lucifer, I'm not sure what role he plays in this situation, other than he is not a very helpful, nor pleasant person to interact with in these forums.

 

Too bad the two companies couldn't get together. The only thing they would have to figure out is what they would call themselves.

 

Tesla has repeatedly said they wouldn't go after auto-makers using their patents because getting away from fossil fuels is more important for the planet than that. Makes me wonder if the judge considered this point?

 

Ordinarily I take "Seeking Alpha" with a grain of salt. So here are some others:

• Tesla Semi rival Nikola's $2B patent infringement lawsuit faces huge roadblock - has link to patent
• Tesla obtains patents for the design of Tesla Semi as it is being sued over it | Electrek - has better link to patent

Bob Wilson

 

It is possible to invalidate a patent, but unfortunately it does take some money and effort to do so. Most companies find it easier to settle and pay a modest license fee than fight it: Cognex Wins Landmark Ruling Against Lemelson Partnership; Court Rules Lemelson Patents Invalid and Unenforceable | Business Wire

 

As one who shepherded a patent application through submission to until approval yes it is an onerous process. In my case over several years. This included an initial denial which showed the patent examiner didn't understand the elements which were unique to the design and how they differed from patents previously awarded to others. Yet for all the difficulty, I have a great sympathy for the examiner and for the patent office. Patents are most frequently in unique and emerging fields where those few who are true experts in the field are few and command rarefied salaries (plus bonuses). How does a government agency compete. How to the examiners keep up in a field which sometimes has little or no academic research and certainly no classes even if the examiners could get permission and funding to attend.

 

There is a thread from when Nicola first filed their suite.
Tesla sued for $2 billion by hydrogen truck startup over alleged patent infringement | PriusChat

Checking out all the links and discussions, you'll learn that the patents in question were design patents. Basically patents on how something looks. These are used to keep a competitor from making a visual clone of a company's product in the hopes of getting sales through customer confusion. Nicola was hoping to get some cash by claiming Tesla copied the exterior of their truck. Except they are obviously not identical, and there are ICE and hybrid truck concepts that predate both with the same general aero design.

 

Bob Lutz, a renowned "car czar" and the blunt-talking former vice chairman of General Motors (GM), has never really been one to soft pedal his opinions, no matter how controversial or curmudgeonly they may seem.

In fact, the former Marine once called climate change "a total crock" and said rival Toyota's (7203.TO) push into hybrids was nothing more than a PR stunt and made "no economic sense."

He has taken aim at Tesla (TSLA) in recent years, saying back in 2017 that the car company would "never get to 2019." This week, with CEO Elon Musk's troubles mounting Lutz is feeling pretty good about his bearish position
"It's an automobile company that is headed for the graveyard... The jaws are tightening, and I think in another year or two we'll see a movie called'Who Killed Tesla,' a conspiracy movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio."

That's Lutz making a crack about "Who Killed the Electric Car," a 2006 documentary that nailed GM as the leading bad guy in stalling the electric-car market.

In an interview on CNBC, Lutz said Musk is a nice guy, but he doesn't know how to run a car company.

"They will never make money on the Model 3 because the cost is way too high. He's got 9,000 people in that assembly plant producing less than 150,000 cars a year. The whole thing just doesn't compute," he continued. "Tesla has no... tech advantage, no software advantage, no battery advantage. No advantages whatsoever."

Lutz pointed to Audi, Mercedes, BMW and Porsche as all viable competitors in the space that can sell their cars at a loss and make up for it with their other models if need be. Meanwhile, Tesla just keeps "hemorrhaging cash."


Tesla stock closed Wednesday up 4.93%, or $14.06, to $299.02. Tesla took a hit in Tuesday's session after a report said the company was under criminal investigation for Musk's infamous going-private tweet.

 

Elon Musk, the brash Silicon Valley billionaire, was sued on Monday by a British cave explorer he had accused of being a pedophile after the two butted heads over the high-profile rescue of children from a cave in Thailand this summer.

In the lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in California, lawyers for the caver, Vernon Unsworth, accused Mr. Musk of embarking on a defamation campaign “to destroy” Mr. Unsworth’s reputation “by publishing false and heinous accusations of criminality.”

“Musk’s influence and wealth cannot convert his lies into truth or protect him from accountability for his wrongdoing in a court of law,” one of the caver’s lawyers, L. Lin Wood, said in an emailed statement. The suit is seeking damages in excess of $75,000.

The lawsuit stems from the efforts to rescue members of a children’s soccer team who, with their coach, became trapped by rising waters in a Thai cave on June 23 — a predicament that captivated the world. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Unsworth, who had explored the cave over the past six years, got involved the next day.

a plan that was later rejected.

When asked about the idea by a reporter, Mr. Unsworth derided it as “just a P.R. stunt.”

“He can stick his submarine where it hurts,” Mr. Unsworth said in a CNN video. “It just had absolutely no chance of working.”

series of Twitter posts. While he later deleted and apologized for those messages, Mr. Musk renewed the attack recently.

In a pair of emails sent late last month, Mr. Musk urged a BuzzFeed News reporter to “stop defending child rapists” after the reporter asked for comment about Mr. Unsworth’s threat of a lawsuit.

later reversed course, but not before the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating whether his original Twitter post had violated securities law.

In an interview last month with The New York Times, Mr. Musk also emotionally described the past year as “excruciating” and “the most difficult and painful year of my career.”

And this month, he took a drag from a tobacco-and-marijuana joint during an interview, an act that is legal in California but nevertheless raised concerns among some about his judgment and use of drugs.

Spokesmen for Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

Yes... And that willingness to pay a license fee rather than the cost of a lawsuit has led to an entire industry that makes nothing, innovates nothing, advances nothing, but uses their unused patents holding rights to threaten people who don't pay them to avoid litigation. The courts are catching on to this corruption too. From dismissing cases with prejudice, to high court rulings that these con-artists don't have the right to file a claim in a court with corrupt judges who rule favorably with their shake down tactics, but that they have to file in the court most appropriate to the specific case... I could go on and on... If we didn't have so many greedy imbecile billionaires turning the federal government into a a crime syndicate, we'd actually have a whole new raft of patent reform that would put these criminals out of business for good.

 

Well, yeah... I mean it has to be if your main job is trolling online forums and your screen name happens to be Chicken Little, or Lucifer, or Sam Spade....

 

i thought klutz was dead. did someone steal his twitter account?

 

Hill his girlfriend is 40 they met in the UK while she was working at a restaurant. He was 56 at the time she was 33. I see nothing offensive about the relationship. Really it seems musk has been taking abien to sleep and should not have been tweeting.

I hope Elon gets enough sleep. This is a sad set of tweets, but that is all they are. I don't think the mini sub would have worked in thailand as it was too big for the cave. He tried, he should have left it at that. This doesn't have much influence on tesla, except it show elon musk isn't getting enough sleep.