Team Secrets

[Tf105]

With teams 'trading' drivers sometimes at the end of the year/season what ever... do the drivers take some of the teams secrets... is there some sort of code of honour or something.... and do the drivers openly compare their current car to a previous team's car ?

[djb]

internal fuel bladder to pressurize fuel...rumour was that that was leaked by a former employee....not a driver apparantly. this is not fact, but it makes sense that the limited technical knowledge that a driver has of the extremely complex modern F1 car would obviously be compared to a new car, although each different car must react differently to the myriad of combinations of factors and the resulting dominoe effect one factor had on another. Goes back to the engineers etc, they are usually theones who usually go "gardening" for a year when they leave a team no?

[LongJohnSilver]

Much of it is protected under trade secret laws and the like. An example of this can be found when in late 2003 a Toyota engineer was arrested by German officials, accused of takings such secrets from his former employer Ferrari. The TF103 was said to basically be a copy of the incredibly sucessful F2002.

Im sure the line of what is giving up trade secrets and what is applying what and individual learned in past expeirences at a different employer is very blurred. With drivers, you also have to consider the fact that most drivers dont know too much about the technical workings of the car. Some devote more energy to such studies than others, and some may very well be kept out of the loop for such reasons as you are mentioning.

[Tf105]

so.. in terms of say the chassis engineer.. the ideas are technically his.. so couldn't he legally implement these with another team if he was to move. or does he 'sell' the rights to his ideas when he's with one team..i mean an idea is a hard thing to part with..especially if it got optimum results... couldn't the engineer patent his design so he could use it whereever he goes??

[Jacal]

The way it works in industry and science, here anyway, is that the ideas you develop are the property of the employer. So If you develop a concept and put it on an employer's car then it becomes their idea.

In terms of Patenting it is so expensive to gain the patent that unless there is a market to make it worthwhile and you are prepared to take it to court to protect the patent then for an individual chassis engineer he'd be wasting his money.

The grey ground is likely to come in around whether it is a normal part of knowledge he has learned during the course of his professional development or proprietary information. If the former then an individual could argue that the team is restraining his right to earn an income by restricting his use of that knowledge gained while in their employ.

Important to note that there is a difference between knowledge held in the guy's head and taking drawings, parts, computer files that are property of his former employer. If this was the case in the Ferrari/Toyota incident above then Ferrari and the german authorities are probably right. Ofcourse to get a proper answer it will probably run to 10 volumes of legal documents but that's my understanding as an engineer