Blaze1 wrote: ↑01 Feb 2018, 13:20
I thought patents didn't really apply to F1? I guess because manufacturers do sell there PUs to customer teams, that a patent could be used to protect IP. On the chassis side it'd probably be less useful.
Patents don't stop other people from using inventions, they just ensure that the original patentee benefits from that usage. There are laws about licensing of IP from patents (basically, you cannot set a price so high as to exclude people from reuse).
Patents generally have to be explicit enough to demonstrate a concept, but they don't have to be so detailed as to give away all of the tricks required to get something to work or be practical. Generally they tend to be written by engineers in a draft format, then handed off to an IP law specialist who will rewrite the content into something legally defensible, but which is often utter garbage to engineers.
As you may detect from my tone in this reply, I have some experience with this.