Does Elon Musk not "do" patents as claimed in a Facebook post by NeuroVigil chairman and CEO Philip Low? No, that's not true in at least several documented cases: a search of the U.S. patent office website showed 14 patent documents with Musk's name on them. Several of the documents also listed the names of other people as inventors, alongside Musk.
The claim appeared in a long Facebook post (archived here and here) published on January 24, 2025, specifically in a section that read:
That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla (the reason he does not do patents is because he would not be listed as an inventor as putting a fake inventor on a patent would kill it and moreover it would reveal the superstars behind the work).
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jan 28 12:10:49 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories used the U.S. Patent Office's Basic Patent search website too look up patents where the name of the inventor contained "Elon" and "Musk", using a search query that looked like this:
(Source: screenshot of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website taken January 28, 2025 at 12:29:11 UTC)
This search query returned 14 results:
(Source: screenshot of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website taken January 28, 2025 at 12:29:31 UTC)
The most recent of the patents, dated December 2024, listed 17 other inventors besides Elon Musk:
(Source: image downloaded from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website on January 28, 2025 at 12:41:11 UTC)
Another one dated March 10, 2015 listed three other inventors besides Musk:
(Source: image downloaded from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website on January 28, 2025 at 12:43:47 UTC)
