Innovation & IP Asset Consulting
Convergence for divergent trends

TOYOTA WILL GO IN SERIES WITH FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGY SOONER THAN PLANNED

Tokyo, July 2014: Already  in the upcoming spring, the car manufacturer Toyota wants to sell its fuel cell-car and start exporting to USA and Europe in the summer. The starting price is cheaper than expected at around € 60,000. With extensive subsidies and tax breaks, the Japanese government wants to ensure that the market shares are backed up early and its auto industry stays highly competitive. In parallel, the current high production costs shall be significantly reduced by 2025, as well as the infrastructure being  further defined.  Read the Rest

ELECTRIC CAR DEVELOPER TESLA ANNOUNCES ROYALTY FREE LICENSES

Palo Alto, June 2014: Elon Musk, founder of electric car maker Tesla announced with a blog entry:

Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

As part of the open source movement, Tesla does not want to lead any patent litigation, provided that the patents are used “in good faith”. This leaves much room for interpretation and we must wait out whether Tesla will implement this announcement into action.  Read the Rest

LG requests to stop selling cars from BMW and AUDI in Korea

LG has started patent litigation in Korea and tries BMW and AUDI to stop selling the respective automobile models in Korea. The subject matter of the suit are LED flood lights by OSRAM which have been implemented in the auto models. This is probably a counter-attack as OSRAM had started patent litigation in Korea earlier with the attempt to force LG and SAMSUNG to stop exporting several types of LEDs. Corresponding suits had also been established in the U.S., Japan and China before.