Ramifications and speculation around TD045 and how it affects team operations

[Just_a_fan]

If your staff don't have the knowledge and experience and you can't bring in that knowledge/experience, then using a side-hustle to give your staff the knowledge is an alternative. Sadly, it's also illegal. And that's the point.

No it isn't. It's perfectly legal. The new TD45 says that any intellectual property cannot be transferred, but it says nothing about people's knowledge/expertise.

If I read the secret recipe for a particular sauce and use that knowledge to make my own sauce for sale, I am considered to have stolen IP.

That knowledge is the IP.

Quite simple, really.

Another way of looking at it - the FIA say to the team "if that information/knowledge isn't IP, let's just give a copy to every team, shall we?". That's not going to go down well, is it?

[chrisc90]

If your staff don't have the knowledge and experience and you can't bring in that knowledge/experience, then using a side-hustle to give your staff the knowledge is an alternative. Sadly, it's also illegal. And that's the point.

No it isn't. It's perfectly legal. The new TD45 says that any intellectual property cannot be transferred, but it says nothing about people's knowledge/expertise.

If I read the secret recipe for a particular sauce and use that knowledge to make my own sauce for sale, I am considered to have stolen IP.

That knowledge is the IP.

Quite simple, really.

Another way of looking at it - the FIA say to the team "if that information/knowledge isn't IP, let's just give a copy to every team, shall we?". That's not going to go down well, is it?

So if a team member leaves from RB and they know the 'secret sauce' and that person goes to Mercedes, that's stolen IP, because that team member knows the ingredients of the 'secret sauce' and can them implement the ingredients of that sauce into a competitors design.

Sadly, it doesn't quite work like that when staff move around in F1.

[dans79]

But simply stating it's cheating and bad is missing the larger picture. In fact, it's plain ignorant.

Nah, I think you just don't like my opinion, hence why you are resorting to insults now.

[Tiny73]

If your staff don't have the knowledge and experience and you can't bring in that knowledge/experience, then using a side-hustle to give your staff the knowledge is an alternative. Sadly, it's also illegal. And that's the point.

No it isn't. It's perfectly legal. The new TD45 says that any intellectual property cannot be transferred, but it says nothing about people's knowledge/expertise.

Anything in peoples head is still perfectly within the rules. The challenge for the FIA is monitoring communication channels. That's why they are currently scrutinizing chat conversations etc. to make sure that F1 teams aren't somehow transferring anything tangible (data, designs) in via secrets channels.

But anything in peoples head is still perfectly legal, and using other projects for training your staff is also perfectly legal, as long as that time they spend there isn't spent working on F1.

I don't know why you would think otherwise.

What do you think intellectual property is if it’s not knowledge?

[Just_a_fan]

No it isn't. It's perfectly legal. The new TD45 says that any intellectual property cannot be transferred, but it says nothing about people's knowledge/expertise.

If I read the secret recipe for a particular sauce and use that knowledge to make my own sauce for sale, I am considered to have stolen IP.

That knowledge is the IP.

Quite simple, really.

Another way of looking at it - the FIA say to the team "if that information/knowledge isn't IP, let's just give a copy to every team, shall we?". That's not going to go down well, is it?

So if a team member leaves from RB and they know the 'secret sauce' and that person goes to Mercedes, that's stolen IP, because that team member knows the ingredients of the 'secret sauce' and can them implement the ingredients of that sauce into a competitors design.

Sadly, it doesn't quite work like that when staff move around in F1.

Staff move. It's part of F1. Teams using side hustles to circumvent the rules is not considered part of F1.

[TFSA]

But simply stating it's cheating and bad is missing the larger picture. In fact, it's plain ignorant.

Nah, I think you just don't like my opinion, hence why you are resorting to insults now.

I don't. But i actually took time to explain and argue why i think it's ignorant.

However, calling out your opinion (not you, mind you, but your opinion, which is a relevant distinction) for being ignorant isn't an insult. It's just my opinion of your opinion. It wasn't argued in any way. If you want to avoid having your opinion called out, you could start arguing it, rather than just throwing it out there, and assuming it speaks for itself. Then we would have a foundation for a proper discussion

[chrisc90]

If I read the secret recipe for a particular sauce and use that knowledge to make my own sauce for sale, I am considered to have stolen IP.

That knowledge is the IP.

Quite simple, really.

Another way of looking at it - the FIA say to the team "if that information/knowledge isn't IP, let's just give a copy to every team, shall we?". That's not going to go down well, is it?

So if a team member leaves from RB and they know the 'secret sauce' and that person goes to Mercedes, that's stolen IP, because that team member knows the ingredients of the 'secret sauce' and can them implement the ingredients of that sauce into a competitors design.

Sadly, it doesn't quite work like that when staff move around in F1.

Staff move. It's part of F1. Teams using side hustles to circumvent the rules is not considered part of F1.

People move between companies inside and outside of F1.

Its one of those that is impossible to police, or even put a price on. If Allison or Newey take a year out from F1 to study boating, or cycling. Decide its not for them and return a year or 2 later....are they just expected to not bring into F1 that information they learned from boating or cycling for example and get a head start on F1 designs because they had a unlimited budget when they weren't working in F1?

I imagine what TD45 aims to address is designs that are made outside of F1 and brought in at a fraction of the cost to develop inside the budget cap. Staff members moving between teams arent going to forget how a piece of air flows around a front wing/wheel/floor when they sit and study that design for 10hours of the day all year.

If a team goes out and develops say a new brake friction material that works wayyy more effective under all conditions, as a side hustle, then brings that same design/compound into F1 they have spent millions researching and testing, that will be what the FIA are wanting to crack down on.

If a aero guy sits down on a evening with his personal laptop, tweaking a design in a online CAD and CFD tool, effectively burning the midnight oil, then it will be practically impossible for the FIA to police. Same applies if you do it with a track car, F1 engine hypercar, AM Valkryie, Ferrari cars etc.

[TFSA]

If I read the secret recipe for a particular sauce and use that knowledge to make my own sauce for sale, I am considered to have stolen IP.

That knowledge is the IP.

The sauce is the IP. If you make a replica, it's IP.

If you use it as a source for inspiration, it isn't. That's like arguing that if you know a secret sauce that uses ingredient X, then any other sauce produced with that ingredient is stealing IP. That's not how that works

In Neweys book, he details how he drew the RB5 based on his memory of the McLaren. Quote:
"Working long hours, I drew a new car from front to back, using my memory of the McLaren shape as a starting point. Doing this is perfectly acceptable from a legal standpoint, because whatever is in your head is fair game. What you can't do, however, it's use materials, drawings, documents and so forth."

A direct example of that is the way teams are allowed to copy each others cars these days. They are allowed to (and frequently do) copy each other, as long as they don't steal plans and designs, and do the work by hand - ie, it has to be created by a human mind. Teams aren't allowed to use any CAD-tools that allows them to take, say, a bunch of pictures of a competitors car, and then use software to construct a CAD-model based on those pictures. You can use the pictures for inspiration, but you want to do anything with anything you see, you have to do it manually.

Having knowledge of a concept and applying that knowledge isn't stealing IP.

[Stu]

Content moved in, new topic created.

[chrisc90]

Content moved in, new topic created.

Good call! Should be a decent conversation providing everyone stays sensible.


It would be good to know exactly what the FIA is classing as IP and exactly what TD45 aims to prevent teams from doing.

We know a lot of teams have staff members higher up that work on different projects, so knowing exactly what is being stopped, and backdated, would be nice to know.

[Stu]

It would be good to know how teams will have to financially adjust to add in 7 months of additional work halfway through the season!
We (as fans) will not know until the end of August 2024.

The timing of the clarification seems to coincide with the thorough review of last years budget cap submissions.

[chrisc90]

Yeah, they must have found something that was happening and decided to shut the door - so to speak. I wonder if that relates to rumours that some teams had staff working on other stuff and asked to clarify the roles of certain staff

[Cs98]

What do you think intellectual property is if it’s not knowledge?

Then poaching staff should be considered IP theft. Spy-gate fines for everybody

"Working long hours, I drew a new car from front to back, using my memory of the McLaren shape as a starting point. Doing this is perfectly acceptable from a legal standpoint, because whatever is in your head is fair game. What you can't do, however, it's use materials, drawings, documents and so forth."

Pretty pointless to argue about this beyond here, no? Newey would know better than us. Not to mention it's 100% consistent with what we know goes on with staff moving between teams and other projects.

[dans79]

Their is a big difference between someone bring knowledge attained during the course of their career, and teams trying to intentionally circumvent the budget cap by putting people on very technically relevant projects that live outside the cap.

[Farnborough]

Their is a big difference between someone bring knowledge attained during the course of their career, and teams trying to intentionally circumvent the budget cap by putting people on very technically relevant projects that live outside the cap.

That encapsulates it well I feel. Normal business practice to aquire skills with the cost bourne by the principal operation for training, advancement, competitive edge within industry.

Here though, because of cost cap intention, those costs and methods naturally should be examined closely to understand if they are true normal operations or if they exist in some other accounting "backwater" and treated with the suspicion they obviously generate.
Which person went where and did what is relevant in assessment of their effect under this current operational direction.