The AVM program has little or nothing to do with drones or robotics, I believe this is just some creative reporting done by the author. The "Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach" part of the program is really just about getting manufacturing technology ( rapid prototyping hardware, cad software, etc ) into the hands of kids and getting them interested and excited about science, math, and engineering.
My understanding of the 'wanting unlimited rights" is that all the designs will be 'open source' and available to everyone. If you look at the Vehicleforge portion of the AVM proposal, I think you would see that what they are proposing is very similar to a traditional 'software forge" (sourceforge, github) but applied to design of physical systems.