Business Report: Tesla's Intellectual Property Protection Methods

This report examines Tesla's strategies for protecting its intellectual property (IP), focusing on copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. The introduction highlights the importance of IP protection for companies like Tesla, which relies on innovation in electric vehicles. The main body delves into each IP tool, explaining how Tesla utilizes copyrights for graphics and videos, patents to encourage innovation, trademarks to represent the brand, and trade secrets to maintain competitive advantages. The report emphasizes the legal aspects and the significance of each tool in preventing misuse and protecting the company's assets. It also discusses the importance of these protections for customer engagement. The conclusion summarizes the need for organizations to effectively evaluate and implement IP rights to secure their assets and maintain a strong brand identity. References include books and journals that support the analysis of Tesla's IP strategies.

Unit 8 - Innovation and
Commercialisation
(LO4)

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
LO4..................................................................................................................................................3
P7: Tools to protect intellectual properties..................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Intellectual proper is the organizational activity through which organizations tend to utilize the
legal legislations, through which organizational properties like company's name, logo, etc.
cannot be reused without the permission of the company. Tesla is the chosen organization for the
evaluation in this report, the company tend to provide electrical based smart cars to the customer
all across the globe. Evaluation on the several tools which are being utilized by the company to
protect its intellectual properties is being done in this report.
MAIN BODY
LO4
P7: Tools to protect intellectual properties
Creating an original product which requires mental activity, makes it an intellectual
property. A betterment of the company it is important to protect intellectual properties.
Protecting IP is important for economy and growth of the company.
Copyright- It gives Tesla legal right of intellectual property to copy. In simple terms, it means
only the original creators or anyone with authorization can reproduce the work. Copyright gives
right to duplicate the product or use it for later time period. It protects from replication of the
product by any unauthorized party. In order to be copyright protected, it should be in tangible
form. Including a copyright makes tracking down of copyright Tesla easier and can have a legit
permission to use the work (Zakieva, and et.al., 2019).
For tesla all graphics, animation, videos, sound files are all subjected to copyright
protection. In order of the product to be 'original', need to protect copyright is important. It is
very crucial for the company to emphasis on its copyright because it is the means by which
organisation can protect its valuable ideas and knowledge (Rimmer, 2020). The competitors of
Tesla can copy the valuable designs and thus can affect the competitive benefits. Hence it is very
essential that organisation must understand the need of copyright tools. In case if organisation
finds any company guilty of violating its copyrights then organisation can take legal actions
against it so that only Tesla can use its innovative knowledge for gaining required benefits. There
are several organisations who does not pay attention to this intellectual right and thus their
technology or innovations are easily copied by others. It enhances the competition in the market
and despite good research and development team organisation fails to gain necessary benefits in
terms of market gain.

Patents- It is right granted to an inventor to exclude others from selling, making, design the
invention for a limited period. Patents are granting property rights to the inventor by a sovereign
authority. Government handles and approves patents. Patent motivates companies to be
innovative with their products so it demonstrates company's innovativeness so, protection of
patent is necessary (Li, 2020). Tesla intends to encourage platform for electric vehicles, so they
do not initiate patent lawsuits against someone who wants to use the technology. Tesla's patent
provides companies to use technology covered by Tesla's patent portfolio. The company has also
given some key restrictions in its patent pledge like there should not be selling of a knock-off
product, no challenge to Tesla's patent, and no assertion of any intellectual property right against
Tesla.
Trademarks- Trademark are word or symbols which distinguishes goods or sources of one
organization from another (Brem, Nylund, and Hitchen, 2017.) Unlike copyright and patent,
trademark have no expiry date, they can last forever. All marks displayed on Tesla, inc. internet
sites are subjected to trademarks rights. The company is very sensitive towards its trademark
policies and has been into many conflicts over the years. Trademark represents the company and
therefore should be protected. The specific designs and secrets of products and services are
necessary to protect so that company’s valuable knowledge can be retained only within the
organisation and is not expose to outside environment (Al-Sharieh, 2021). The respective
developing teams must ensure that they are aware of these intellectual rights so that optimum
benefits can be received on the basis of developed knowledge. This is an important step for the
organization because organizational trade mark is the symbolic representation, through which
customers tend to identify the organizational products from the other products. Therefore, if the
trade mark is being misused then it will affect the quality of experience with the customers can
achieve with the organisation.
Trade-secrets- As the name suggests, it is any practice or process which is unknown for the
outside world of the company. These gives company advantage over its competitors. Unlike
patent a trade-secret is not publicly confessed, it cannot have economic benefits to someone for
the information and Tesla must put some efforts to maintain the secrecy. Trade secrets can be
anything like formulas, designs, patterns or any information that can inherent economic values.
To protect these legal procedures are non-disclosure agreements, work-for-hire and non-compete
clauses. Violation of these agreements can lead to heavy penalties and lawsuits. Tesla was

recently involved in one such lawsuit against a company where a former employee disclosed
some trade-secrets of Tesla.
CONCLUSION
From the evaluation in this report it can be summarised that organizations like Tesla has to make
sure that it is able to evaluate all the intellectual property rights. Then on that bases fulfil the
organizational requirements, through which it can make sure that it is able to restrict the misuse
of organizational assets. With that this is also important for the company due to the fact that,
customers tend to develop brand personality. On which bases they develop a close contact with
the customers. Due to which company has to make sure that it is able to utilize the brand
personality in such a way that customers are motivated to increase their level of engagement for
utilizing the organizational services. Therefore, by securing the intellectual property Tesla can
make sure that organizational customers are being secured from the misguiding act of other and
are able to utilize the original quality of products.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Brem, A., Nylund, P.A. and Hitchen, E.L., 2017. Open innovation and intellectual property
rights: How do SMEs benefit from patents, industrial designs, trademarks and
copyrights?. Management Decision.
Zakieva, and et.al., 2019. The significance of studying legal protection of rights on innovative
creations: The case of entrepreneurship education. Journal of Entrepreneurship
Education. 22(3). pp.1-11.
Al-Sharieh, S., 2021. The intellectual property road to the knowledge economy: remarks on the
readiness of the UAE Copyright Act to drive AI innovation. Law, Innovation and
Technology, pp.1-26.
Li, P., 2020. Intellectual Property for Humanity: A Manifesto. ATRIP Research Handbook in
Intellectual Property (Edward Elgar 2021).
Rimmer, M., 2020. Lady Ada: Limor Fried, Adafruit Industries, intellectual property and open
source hardware. Intellectual Property and Open Source Hardware (November 30,
2020). Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, Forthcoming.
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