formula1
22 September 2014Patents

Williams F1: in the fast lane

Among the pantheon of sporting gaffes and commentators’ nightmares is a gem from renowned Formula One (F1) enthusiast Murray Walker. “The lead car is absolutely unique except for the one behind it, which is identical” he famously exclaimed while commentating on a race.

The quote is often cited on websites and in books that compile memorable nonsensical phrases and has become known, alongside several similar examples, as a “Murrayism”.

But for Christian Bedford, senior legal counsel at Williams Martini Racing, the quote, although probably accidental, has a very real meaning when it comes to protecting the team’s IP.

“I think that really sums up the IP problem in F1: you can come up with a fantastic solution to a problem, but as soon as you put your car on a track another team can copy it very quickly.”

This, he explains, has led Williams to try to keep many of its inventions secret.

“Trade secrets have always been prevalent throughout F1 but there are also problems because you still have to put your car on the track every couple of weeks,” he says.

Keeping secrets

At the start of the 2014 F1 season some significant changes to the rules and regulations were introduced, including changes affecting engines and car designs. Although it has been a successful season for the Williams team so far—at the time of writing it stands fourth in the constructors’ championship—these changes can make it difficult to use patents effectively.

“From last year to this year there has been an overhaul of the technical regulations. The degree of technical knowledge that could be usefully passed over from last year to this year, for example, is less than it will be from this year to next year, when the regulations will largely stay the same. It depends on how much the rules change every year.

“You can come up with a great solution and then the rules may change. Our view would be: ‘what is the point in patenting it and spending money if you then have to move on in a year’s time?’. You may as well keep it secret, unless you can see a route to market for the technology in other fields or the technology could be reverse-engineered in the hands of third parties,” says Bedford.

It is perhaps the fast-paced nature of the sport and the public showcasing of a team’s creation during testing, warm-up and racing that have made Bedford err on the side of caution when keeping Williams’ most important innovations secret.

Trade secrets can eliminate the need for a patent: they can have an infinite lifespan and theoretically they will never be made public. But things are rarely that simple, as Bedford explains.

“Finding out and proving that someone has used your trade secrets is very difficult because, in practical terms, the burden of proof is very firmly on the person who is trying to show that the trade secret has been stolen and used.

“You would have to show that the information is in fact confidential, that you have disclosed it in confidence to that person, that they have taken it and used it for themselves and that it has also caused, or is likely to cause, you damage,” he says.

Bedford continues: “An interesting area is when staff, for example members of the engineering team, leave to join rival teams. In reality, you can’t take knowledge out of someone’s head but you can try and stop them using it.”

"you can come up with a fantastic solution to a problem, but as soon as you put your car on a track another team can copy it very quickly.”

He explains some of the ways in which this can be done. “For example, we ensure staff sign up to confidentiality agreements as part of their employment contracts and we enforce restrictive covenants. This means that should they choose to go to a competitor they would have to wait a certain amount of time before joining.

“The flip side is when staff from other teams decide to join Williams. We have had other F1 teams enforcing restrictive covenants on their staff who, as a result, have not been able to work for us for a number of months,” he says.

Technology advances

Although trade secrets can be more useful than patents in the F1 industry, there is still some room for patents. After all, the sheer pace and competitive environment of F1 forces teams to come up with fantastic technology, Bedford notes.

“The front wing of a car has a life cycle of around seven weeks—that’s seven weeks from an aerodynamicist thinking about what it is going to look like, building a model, testing it, building the real thing, and putting it on the car, before racing it in a couple of races.

“By then it is obsolete and it will get updated and improved with the next one. The whole process takes more than 1,000 man hours and it requires a significant amount of money to build one.

“But that is just a small example; if you are spending so much money and investing in technology to come up with cutting-edge solutions, only for those solutions to become obsolete so quickly, why not capture the know-how involved in that process and exploit it in other fields for your customers?” he says.

With sponsorship opportunities dwindling in the wake of the recession, Williams was encouraged to use its technology to provide another revenue stream, Bedford explains. This is where Williams Advanced Engineering comes in—to exploit F1-inspired IP.

“We are involved in a number of projects at the moment. We have announced a technical collaboration with Nismo (Nissan Motorsports) to develop high performance road cars, and we recently built five hybrid supercar prototypes for Jaguar Land Rover. That contained an awful lot of technology,” Bedford says.

If trade secrets and patents provide Williams with some testing situations, protecting its trademarks is hardly a smooth ride either. ‘Williams’ is one of the most common English surnames, which means Bedford has had “a lot of difficulties” trying to secure trademark protection in the past.

However, he says, this has encouraged him to be creative. “We have done things to counteract this problem, such as trademarking our brand.

“Alternatively, you have to be realistic and targeted in what services and classes of goods you can apply for, and accept that you will need to have coexistence agreements with some parties,” he adds.

In total, Williams owns around 200 trademarks, all of which are variations of the Williams name. Securing protection in China has been tricky, particularly for the roundel, which has been registered with the ‘Williams’ word around the world.

Bedford says: “The list of apparently pre-existing third-party rights was ludicrous. One of them had ‘William’s English School’ (ie, an English school belonging to somebody called William) with a picture of a jester’s head and a jester’s hat coming off it—that was a bar to us getting the Williams roundel and word for a number of services. Most of the owners were Chinese-based companies, so it’s really tricky.”

In addition, he says, Williams has had problems with counterfeiting. “Toys and clothing are the main areas. There could be more issues with counterfeiting, now that we have as popular a brand as Martini on board.”

Working with Martini is likely to prove a stellar move commercially, but the relationship means Bedford may have to answer some tricky questions about IP and branding.

He adds: “We go racing all around the world, including Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Russia, and Martini is an alcohol-related brand, and there are strict rules in some of those countries about marketing alcohol. There are also similar rules in countries, such as France, where we do not necessarily go racing, but where our brand is highly visible through merchandising or otherwise.

“We have to come up with some pretty creative solutions to get around that while respecting the law of those countries. They call them ‘dark markets’: the markets where you can’t publicise alcohol. That creates some interesting branding issues,” he says.

While Williams faces the obvious problems of protecting its IP—those looking to play off and counterfeit its brand—it is interesting to note that trade secrets, seemingly one of the most secure forms of IP, are not wholly sturdy. With cars available for competitors to see on a routine basis, showing that your IP has been infringed can be a difficult task.

Walker’s gaffe may have been unintentional, but perhaps the concept of unique yet identical cars is not so far from reality.

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