In 1959, a Volvo safety engineer named Nils Bohlin designed the three-point seatbelt still used in almost every car on Earth today — and Volvo made one unusual decision immediately afterward: it opened the patent to every competitor, calculating that saving lives mattered more than owning the design

In 1959, a Volvo safety engineer named Nils Bohlin designed the three-point seatbelt still used in almost every car on Earth today — and Volvo made one unusual decision immediately afterward: it opened the patent to every competitor, calculating that saving lives mattered more than owning the design

Why would a company hand a rival the one thing worth patenting? That question sits at the center of a decision Volvo made more than six decades ago, and it still reads as odd today. A firm develops something genuinely valuable, files for a patent, and then, instead of licensing it for a fortune, gives it away to every competitor who wants it. That is roughly what happened with the seatbelt in your car right now. The short version: in the late 19…