I'm not familiar enough with the automotive industry to know. To make some rough strawman examples: If a smaller/startup company gives away patents under a "go

I'm not familiar enough with the automotive industry to know. To make some rough strawman examples: If a smaller/startup company gives away patents under a "good-faith" condition, it may at best help other startups try to come up to develop the market - perhaps that was Tesla's intent at the time. If a larger company does this, I'm a bit more confused on intent - perhaps it might be seen as an 'option' in addition to traditional licensing. Where one can either pay for a license or optionally get a free license in exchange for not asserting patent rights against the larger company later on. I've seen cases where a smaller company may exert patent rights on something seemingly obvious on the industry (they filed the patent, and some judge in Marshall, Texas enforced it), and ends up becoming a method of sharing patent rights with other companies in the industry (e.g. smaller company exerts patent rights, larger company discovers smaller company is infringing on their patents, lawyers end up sitting down and negotiating some license for license agreement). This may be changing a bit with the changes in how patent holders choose courts (see https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-05-25/the-texas-town-that-patent-trolls-built-j34rlmjc https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-05-25/the-te... )