Elon Musk has a very loose definition of the word "founder." The Tesla CEO calls himself a PayPal founder; he isn't. He calls himself a Tesla founder; today a court begins hearings over whether he should stop saying that.

One of the real founders of Tesla, ousted CEO Martin Eberhard, argues that Musk didn't actually start the company. Reasonable! But no barrier to Musk: He has argued he should be called co-founder of PayPal for contributing to PayPal's "viral growth mechanism" and "business model." What really happened: Musk talked his way into a merger with payments company Confinity several months after Confinity launched a product called "PayPal."

Musk's arguments about Tesla are much the same; he just told the Associated Press "we had to basically rebuild the company," and thus he has claim on the title "co-founder." Of course, if cleaning up someone else's mess makes one a co-founder, every taxpayer in America can rightfully say he helped start Tesla, along with GM, Goldman Sachs and other corporation bailed out by the government. Be sure to thank Musk when you update your resumé.