Toyota opposes tax credit designed for Volt

DAVE - i wholeheartedly agree with you. i think this patent is outrageous and it means nothing! it's a relatively BLANK patent.

YODADDYALEX - republicans or whatever, it's an issue that needs to be contested. if not court, then send "vito" to break some legs!

whichever, this is a ridiculous patent and it should be OVERTURNED. GM and chevron is just holding back potential future technology for the rest of us. this is very selfish indeed. this patent should NEVER have been issued. what an absurd patent.

 

The patent holder has total monopoly, can put whatever price or restrictions they want on it, for whatever reason, even just stop everyone from using the technology.

ChevronTexaco, a large GM shareholder, bought NiMH patent from GM (after GM finagled it from the Ovshinsky's through a joint venture). GM wasn't stopping the Prius, that would be bad PR, but Chevron had no reason not to and sued Toyota/Matsushita a month after acquiring the patent. The terms are secret, but it is believed that Toyota is not allowed to use batteries larger than some fairly small size not suitable for EV's or maybe even PHEV's.

Yet another demonstration of how patent law does not promote progress as the Constitution intended. It should be reformed or abolished. I favor the latter. There is a vast literature on how this could be done, and in fact it has been done before. During the 19th century some countries never had patent law, others tried it for awhile then rescinded it.

Panasonic tried to argue in the patent case that their technology is different and superior. It appears that is correct. No one has made NiMH battery as good as the one in RAV4-EV, and in fact Cobasys (the Chevron/ECD division that now makes NiMH batteries in US) is having trouble delivering them at all.