On January 6, Toyota Motor announced that it would provide free of charge the patents related to fuel cells (including those under continued examination) which Toyota owns independently, aiming for realization of early diffusion of fuel cell vehicles (FCV).

Toyota possesses about 5680 fuel cell-related patents over the world, including not only the patents relating to the core technology of FCV like the fuel cell stack (about 1970 patents) and the fuel cell control system (about 3350 patents), but also the high-pressure hydrogen tank (about 290 patents) which is deeply involved in the industrial gas business world.

In case FCVs are produced and sold using patents on these fuel cell systems, Toyota is ready to provide free of charge its patent licenses until the end of 2020 when the market will start to introduce FCVs. With regard to the approximate 70 hydrogen station-related patents of hydrogen infrastructure, they have such a high public nature that Toyota does not place any limitation to the period of free provision. For practical provisions of these patent licenses Toyota will discuss individually on concrete terms and conditions for implementation and conclude agreements. Although some part of technologies for hybrid cars is applied to FCV, there are many technical fields which have not existed in the conventional cars such as the fuel cell stack or handling of high-pressure hydrogen gas.

Toyota has so far taken an open-hearted policy as to intellectual properties, and provided onerously provided them to third parties when requested. However, it has been a rare case for Toyota to take such a measure as free provision of its properties. It means that Toyota is so enthusiastic to diffuse FCV.