Do racing teams patent their inventions?

[WaikeCU]

Have a search of the patent websites. Williams, Renault sport, Ilmor, jordan and the inerter all have patents.

I believe Williams patented their flywheel hybrid technology.

[matt21]

They had their active suspension patented

[OO7]

I understand that they have patented ideas that they themselves have developed, but if for instance the Hybrid KERS came from elsewhere and they planned to sell it after incorporating the solution into their designs, they would likely have had to pay royalties.

[Edis]

Have a search of the patent websites. Williams, Renault sport, Ilmor, jordan and the inerter all have patents.

I believe Williams patented their flywheel hybrid technology.

You can only patent new inventions, so any patent involving a flywheel hybrid system needs to cover a very specific technical solution, like for instance a specific method to make a magnetically loaded composite rotor.

[ESPImperium]

These days, not so much unless its a specific item. The reason being is that patents take 18-24 months to realise, and you need to have basic drawings first, then halfway into it more detailed drawings. By then, the rabbit is out the bag and your competition is onto the idea.

However, teams now have Intellectual Property agreements in place. Hence recent Mercedes HPP news with their employee. Which I'm afraid could have been easily avoided with separate servers for HPP F1 and DTM/Other Motorsports.

The last patent in F1 was the McLaren ECU that all the teams use.

[riff_raff]

Have a search of the patent websites. Williams, Renault sport, Ilmor, jordan and the inerter all have patents.

That's an interesting situation. The party listed on the patent documents as the assignee may not have the rights to commercialize the invention. I'd love to see the IP rights agreement in a typical F1 sponsorship contract. I'm sure any company providing a couple $million in funding to an F1 team would expect to have rights to any IP produced of commercial value from that investment.