content: Apart from if anything his outlook shows why, in the long run, Patents are important:  "Our primary long-term competition is in China," Musk said in 2012. "If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book."  This was the original travesty that Patents were designed to combat: People hiding technological advancements for personal gain. The idea was rather simple: If you told people how it worked, you'd be given a period of monopoly in return, increasing mankinds technological knowledge rather than hundreds of companies/inventors hiding away their breakthroughs. We're heading back to that problem due to certain countries ignoring well defined laws.