How Toyota Is Using Patents To Slow The Growth Of Hybrid Vehicles

from the what-a-shame dept

Slashdot points us to a WSJ story about how Toyota has purposely built up a patent thicket so thick that basically no one can build hybrid vehicles without paying up:

Since it started developing the gas-electric Prius more than a decade ago, Toyota has kept its attorneys just as busy as its engineers, meticulously filing for patents on more than 2,000 systems and components for its best-selling hybrid. Its third-generation Prius, which hit showrooms in May, accounts for about half of those patents alone.

Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota, as Ford Motor Co. already did to make its Escape hybrid and Nissan Motor Co. has for its Altima hybrid.

Defenders of the patent system often say that there's no problem: others should just "invent around" the patents. But when companies create a patent thicket like this, that makes it effectively impossible. The end result? We all lose. This makes it that much more expensive and difficult for others to innovate, because they need to allocate money to Toyota, rather than to their own innovations. It slows down Toyota as well, since it's devoting so much time and effort to lawyers. And it massively slows down the market. Rather than competing on innovation and a better product, the focus is on patents. And since it slows down competitors it means Toyota doesn't need to innovate as fast either. In the meantime... not only does the economy suffer, but so does the environment.

Of course, we can't just blame Toyota for this. It's the system that created such a scenario. In fact, Toyota recently went through a long and arduous patent battle with someone else over patents held by that guy -- resulting in Toyota having to pay a tax on every hybrid it makes. So, perhaps it's no wonder that it's trying to gobble up as many patents as possible around hybrids, if only to have the necessary "stockpile" for future patent battles against competitors. Once again, it's the entire patent system that's leading to this questionable result that harms everyone... except the lawyers, of course.

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Hybrid Vehicles Are Quiet -- Maybe Too Quiet, According To A Couple Of Lawmakers

from the danger-will-robinson dept

One of the side effects of hybrid vehicles -- a positive one, for most people -- is quieter operation traditional vehicles in some situations. Less vehicle noise sounds like a good thing, unless you're blind, so a couple of senators have introduced legislation that would direct the Department of Transportation to study ways to protect blind people and other pedestrians (via Engadget) from silent vehicles. This isn't a new complaint: we reported last year about how Lotus was experimenting with putting speakers in hybrids to play engine noises, although we thought it might have been a joke. But apparently Lotus was just ahead of the legislative curve. Still, we have to wonder, is making cars noisier the best way to protect blind people and other pedestrians?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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