Patents are meant to protect innovation, but often they do more harm than good. In 2011, Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion to shield Android from lawsuits by Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle. Once the job was done, it sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. Motorola’s innovation legacy was never revived. And out of 17,000 patents, only 18 were used. The rest just sat there. Meanwhile, companies like Qualcomm and Samsung faced 9,423 IP rejections. The unused patents blocked progress in the telco industry. For smaller players, innovation becomes expensive or impossible due to licensing fees or legal risks. Patents create dominant players who control entire markets. They block competition and stall progress. Even something as small as a connector design can shut out small builders. And if those patents are buried in some corporate junk drawer, they can hold back entire industries. China does the opposite. Although the maker culture started in the U.S., it thrives in China. Cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou are global prototyping hubs where entrepreneurs build custom devices with low friction and high creativity. In the U.S. the models are operating out of fear and protectionism. If the U.S. wants to compete, it needs to let creativity, imagination, and innovation thrive without drama. The irony is not lost on me that one system empowers its people to build freely, the other seems to question their ability to innovate. Before Tesla came about, GM and Ford were early movers in the EV industry but could not scale so they halted it. A few years later, Elon comes around, he understood that a fast-growing EV ecosystem would benefit everyone. A global hardware supply chain cannot thrive with one player alone. By open-sourcing Tesla's patents, he flipped the traditional approach, built the ecosystem, and ultimately led the market. Can Open Source Win? It already has. Jack and Elon prove it everyday. So do other billion-dollar open-source companies like Red Hat, MongoDB, and Redis Labs who hold it on their own as they go against big tech players Oracle, Microsoft, and Google. The power of open communities and network effects is real. If the U.S. wants an innovation-driven economy, it has to let go of the fear of being copied. Hoarding IP has slowed it down. Sharing might just move it forward. View quoted note →