Stolen RedBull plans?

[trumperZ06]

[quote="PSfan"]Yah, I suspect David Richards is gonna write McLeran a cheque, and a McLeran will deliver a chassis :

Nothing lately from Richards on Pro-drive's F-1 plans for 2008. He did say early on that they were considering using both the engine & chassis from one current competitor (McLaren/Mercedes) in 2008.

Oh, Richard's did make a comment on the Aston Martin aquisition recently. They have No Plans to re-enter Aston Martin in ALMS this year.

[Gannex]

this is all so pointless.

Spyker should just build a better car themselves and focus on their own business.

Of course they should, and they ARE trying to build a better car. But the Formula 1 business, especially for independents like Spyker, is fought on very small margins. There isn't a lot of slack in the figures for smaller teams, so if they lose Constructors' TV Revenue, which they counted on when they bought the business, which was part of the justification for their investment in the business, which was an anticipated revenue stream from the business, spelled out in the contract governing F1, agreed to by everyone in the paddock, then I hope you'll forgive them for trying to get that small, but crucial piece of revenue on which they have relied, and to which they are entitled. Why that revenue should be given to Red Bull, who are unwilling to incur the expense of designing and manufacturing two different cars, but want credit for having done so, or to Honda, who want to offset the cost of their second team using Spyker's and Williams's money, why that revenue should go to them, I am at a total loss to understand.

Good. Got that off my chest. Now I can have another glass of wine.

[codalunga]

Malllen, there was nothing illegal about Red Bull using Jaguar's designs, nor about Prost using Benneton's. They were not using parts designed by a then current F1 team. The prohibition is against using parts that are designed by another CURRENT competitor.

Don't recall the Benneton-Prost deal but do recall the Benneton-Ligier fiasco in the mid 1990s ('96?) where the two new cars appeared identical except for engine. Tom Walkinshaw was involved with both teams.

[Gannex]

Whenever Tom Walkinshaw was involved in anything, it was slippery. But don't get me started on Mr. Walkinshaw. . . There are libel laws out there that I ought to be thinking about.

[PSfan]

2 ex-ferrari employee's faced a minimum of 2 years in prison if they where found guilty of bringing ferrari secrets to Toyota, I see very little difference here, so if Red Bull now who gave Spyker the plans...

And now with an update

Former Ferrari employees in jail

Two former employees of the Ferrari Formula 1 team faced trial on Monday and were found guilty. The duo stole Ferrari's software and brought it with them to their new office in Cologne at Toyota F1.

According to Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport the two Italians will be taken to jail. One will have to go behind bars for nine months, the other for one year and four months.

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2007/...oyees_in_jail/

Now if Red Bull figured out who leaked the plans... through the book at em!!! :

[Gannex]

I would argue, PSfan, that there are huge differences between the actions of the two Ferrari defectors and the Red Bull employee who passed the Lower Bracket T-Tray Stay design to Spyker. The ex-Ferrari employees passed to a competitor hugely valuable intellectual property, many megabytes of information on CD-ROM's which would give Toyota ideas that would have taken them years to develop themselves, and would have cost millions. The motive for the theft was to give Toyota a competitive advantage at no development cost; a straightforward theft on a grand scale.

The Red Bull theft was completely different. It was the theft of a piece of paper, which detailed the design of a Lower Bracket T-Tray Stay, a very low-tech part, and a single part, the design of which would be of no use whatsoever to Spyker. Having that design would save Spyker not one penny of development cost, would give Spyker no benefit whatsoever in the design of their car, and in that sense, was not really the acquisition of a secret at all. The scale of the theft, therefore, was wholly different to the scale of the Ferrari theft.

And the motivation was entirely different as well. In the Ferrari case, the motivation was to steal Ferrari's ideas in order to gain unfair competitive advantage for Toyota at no cost. In Red Bull's case, the motivation was to expose as a lie Gerhard Berger's claim that Toro Rosso's car was designed by a third party, Red Bull Technologies. What was stolen, in fact, was merely the "Red Bull Racing" logo on the design document; the fact that it also showed a confidential design was totally incidental.

So the cases are entirely different, the Ferrari case being a serious case of industrial espionage, the Red Bull case being nothing more than an illegal short-cut to the truth, that the part in question was a Red Bull Racing design. The Ferrari thieves deserved their jail sentence; the Red Bull leaker, whose identity is known, by the way, to Mateschitz and Berger, deserves only a slap on the wrist by the justice system, and a hearty cheer from all those who cherish truth. One case involved thieves, the other involved a courageous whistle-blower; they could not be more different.

[ioan]

So the cases are entirely different, the Ferrari case being a serious case of industrial espionage, the Red Bull case being nothing more than an illegal short-cut to the truth...

I guess it's just a matter of POV.
In both cases the employees were pushed to do something illegal in exchange material benefits.
Both Toyota and Spyker did the same thing.