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that it would make its 5,600 strong portfolio of patents in
the area of hydrogen powered vehicles available to rival
carmakers on a royalty-free basis until 2020, to speed up
the development of such vehicles.
Again, while this move appears altruistic, it is clearly based
on commercial considerations. The limited royalty free
term seems designed to allow Toyota to start charging
licence fees for use of its technology at precisely the time
that standards for hydrogen powered vehicles that rely on
Toyota’s innovations will have been put in place.
Ford followed suit in May 2015, announcing that it would
allow access to its electric vehicle patent portfolio to
competitor companies, again in a bid to accelerate the
development of the electric vehicle market. However, Ford’s
announcement makes it clear that it expects rivals to pay for
access to its patented technology, through licensing deals.
Like Tesla, Ford will be hoping that releasing its technology
to rival carmakers (albeit on a fee-paying basis) will help to
overcome the technological barriers that have hindered
widespread adoption of electric vehicle technology. Ford is
clearly motivated by a desire to position its own patented
technologies ahead of those of its rivals on the road to
standardisation, whilst generating revenue in the meantime
through licensing fees.
A fourth major company has also announced a patent
giveaway in recent times. In the summer of 2015 Google
announced its “Patent Starter Program”, a scheme under
which it offered two free patent families from its own patent
portfolio to technology start-ups.
The Google program is limited to fifty companies, and those
companies will each be offered a choice of between three
and five patent families, and will have to choose only two.
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