Would A Copyright Rule Improve Development???

[ESPImperium]

I was having a argument about F1 with my dad the other day and he came out with a perfectly valid point in my opinion. When something that benifits the car in a aero development sence, no other team should be allowed to copy that untill the following season.

Take the Red Bull engine cover this year, when they rolled that out, no other team could copy that design till the season was over. So Renault, Toyota, Toro Rosso, Force India and Mclaren could not use that untill next year. Same could be said for the McLaren bridge wind of last year, Red Bull and Toro Rosso couldnt use that till this season.

Could a "copyright" rule work in F1???
What would that mean for the sport if a rule like that was introduced???

[WhiteBlue]

Copyright is ok. But if you mean protected intellectual propeorty like a patent or a protected design I would not agree. Things that are kept secrete and are copy righted should not be copied. But anything that is published or shown should be available for competitors. The tradition, culture and ethos of motor racing should be maintained. One of the main objectives of F1 is to be an instrument of technology advancement. If you allow commercial to take hold you will stop that. An important element of patentability is the commercial value of an invention. You want to pay the inventor to publish his invention to benefit the public by allowing the commercial advantage to be used. In F1 there is no advantage to the public by flushing out inventions against grants of exclusivity. If there is a use in road cars of course you can patent it but you sign a contract with the FIA that the use of the invention is free in F1. I think it is a very sensible thing.

[nae]

they (the teams) already have copyright of anything written down
plans , drawings etc

they probably apply for patents of anything they feel is unique
most likely manufacturing processes rather than parts

both these are not fast moving processes and the season would be out
before the first court case on the matter got its hearing

obvious things cant be patented , although many patent troll companies try it on

and that is aside from the argument of IP being useful to anyone

[guy_smiley]

to answer the question in the title of the thread: no i don't think it would improve development, especially considering the development of F1 as a whole. say (for the sake of the example) mclaren introduced their bridge wing at australia. instead of all 22 cars developing and running their own bridge wing (and further improvements to it) by, say mid-year, only the 2 mclarens would have it--all the way to brazil. obviously some teams have greater rates of development than others, but i think in one way F1 develops as a whole: all the teams come up with unique ideas, put them into their cars, then the teams see each other's ideas, and with the f1 tradition of 'if it can be seen, it can be copied' everyone copies the ideas that work, and in that way all the teams develop together and at a much greater rate. plus there's a possibility things could get ugly if two teams independently developed the same thing, say during the offseason. if an aero department came up with something brilliant, it would be nice for them to have that honored (not copied), but that's just not the way f1 works. all of this is IMO of course

[nae]

the teams already have copyright

and what about the racing line surely they would want to copyright that too!

[Ciro Pabón]

Copyright? Duh.

Your dad could try to understand what it means: copyright covers works of art.

He probably meant "to patent". Good luck about that.

I think most patentable gadgets in F1 cars are already patented by the guy that invented them, and, let me tell you, the huge (superhyperextrahuge) majority of these inventors did not work for an F1 team.

Gosh, the work of sons, to enlighten fathers, never ends... specially the one of my children.

[Belatti]

I think our friend ESPImperium (and dad) are trying to say that FIA should not allow teams to make ´similar´ aero developments than that of their rivals.

"A FIA patent Office"

F1Tech Development blog:
"McLaren new front bridge (PAT PENDING)"

So technically, the only one who answered following the spirit of the question is guy_smiley. I have my doubts about his opinion, because what´s the point of spending millions developing aero gadgets if my neightbour will instantly make a copycat of them and collect the benefits?

mmm... this lead me to think: what if... I cut costs reducing my aero department to just an aero copycat office?

I´m looking in my cristal ball and I see Renault guys

[nae]

under the current 'scheme of things' to directly copy without testing is
pure folly

there is a story of a man that used to race old 600 singles and he had
screw on bell mouths on its carbs, he lost one during a race, thus had
a power loss and resultantly lost positions, he ,being a back street lad,
drilled some holes in his bell mouth so he could insert a screw driver
to tighten it properly,

the following race after his modification was run half of the field had
copied him , and not one of them knew why

no morals or anything just a dull 'racers' story