[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Jomz

Another example of presstitution!!
eh??

I think there is a lot more to it then that. If you start looking into the breakdown on how and to what end this money was handed over to Ford.

Bear in mind that Ford before the last big economic crash was very much in favor of government bail outs and has stated so publicly. True, they did not ask for a bailout last time, as this time their own financial position was good enough. But they had a big interest in their competitors receiving bailouts.

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/09/for...n-on-bailouts/

To Viper's point you could argue whether a government hands out money to companies to do research. If they do, as this is public money, I would expect the result to become public and not protected by IPRs and or patents, so everybody and every party can benefit from it. As soon as the benefits are limited to one, or a very small representation of a certain industry and or sector it is effectively a subsidy to those companies and or sector.

Most countries Im familiar with have very different instruments and policies and policies to stimulate innovation in every sector.

Truth is that in the USA government grants, subsidies and other financial instruments are an intrinsic part of the corporate, national and state political wheeling and dealing. There is a lot at stake for the companies, the national government, the state authorities. Its about jobs for voters, keeping unemployment in check, meeting commitments on promises made during elections, promises to share holders, employees etc. the list is long.

The interesting thing is that just about all the CEOs of the large typical corporates tend to be staunch Republicans. And they don't want any interference from the government, everything should be left to the market. This is the country that more or less claims to have invented the free market economy of course. But those who claim to leave it to free market forces are often the same who will take and even demand the government to step in financially one way or the other.

Jeroen

[Jomz]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

To Viper's point you could argue whether a government hands out money to companies to do research. If they do, as this is public money, I would expect the result to become public and not protected by IPRs and or patents, so everybody and every party can benefit from it. As soon as the benefits are limited to one, or a very small representation of a certain industry and or sector it is effectively a subsidy to those companies and or sector.

Well, this is how the research community gets funds.

It is not a simple process where the CEO goes and asks for money and the government hands it over. The process involves invitation for research proposals on a topic, evaluation of proposals and capabilities, selection of the best candidate and then awarding of the money in stages. They way this differs from a subsidy is that, this is not an explicit money award targeted at a company.This is more like a competition and money is awarded to the winner.

Nobody is stopping an individual/small company to apply for this grants.

Current DOE funding oppurtunities are in
http://science.energy.gov/sbir/funding-opportunities/

Similar portal in Europe
ps://erc.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/funding-schemes

You must be joking when you told patents should belong to sponsor of the research!! On a similar vein, do you think patents of any company should belong to shareholders??

Patents, belong to the primary research company, which employs the researcher - which might be either a company or a national lab.
Cummins has rights over the patent developed in our group. https://www.google.com/patents/US20150219027

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Jomz

Well, this is how the research community gets funds.

The research community, whatever that may be, gets their funds from various sources. A few weeks ago I spend a week at Stanford University. I wrote about that visit here:

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/intern...omous-car.html

We actually discussed the funding of this particular project and others in some detail. A lot of the research done at Stanford is funded from the the private sector. In general Stanford hands over the research result lock stock and barrel to who ever paid for it. Of course, they also publish their results in the public domain as a lot of the research is done by graduate students.

Last year I had the pleasure of staying for a week at the Santa Fe Science institute. A lot of their research is funded by the private sector and they have an elaborate (private and public) fund raising system.

So there are many ways on how research is funded and how and to whom the results and even IPRs become available. it is not unusual that whoever pays for it, gets to (part) own the result. Companies subcontract R&D and you can bet they own the research done by their subcontractor!

Originally Posted by Jomz

It is not a simple process where the CEO goes and asks for money and the government hands it over. The process involves invitation for research proposals on a topic, evaluation of proposals and capabilities, selection of the best candidate and then awarding of the money in stages. They way this differs from a subsidy is that, this is not an explicit money award targeted at a company.This is more like a competition and money is awarded to the winner.

I’m reasonably aware on how these processes work. What I object to is that a specific company gets a grand to do research and subsequently use the research to develop its own commercial products. I don’t approve of such a mechanism of spending public money.

Originally Posted by Jomz

You must be joking when you told patents should belong to sponsor of the research!!

See above, in the work done by Stanford was handed over to Audi in this particular case who, subsequently industrialised, commercialised and put some patents on it.

See above, companies subcontract their R&D and they will own the IPR and can get the patent subsequently in their name.

Neither Stanford or the Santa Fe Science institute or any scientific independent research facility hold many patents. Their purpose is to facilitate, promote and conduct scientific research. Nothing else. Mind you, Stanford has an endowment fund of over 20 billion USD, but that is something different.

It all depends on what you agree in your ‘research contract’.

Originally Posted by Jomz

On a similar vein, do you think patents of any company should belong to shareholders??

I work for a company that has more than 30.000 patents, and I am a (very small) shareholder as well. So I ‘own’ my share of those patents, not in the literally sense of course, but they do represent a certain value and in our case we also allow our patents to be used by others for which we get paid. As a shareholder I would like to see my shares increase in value (the patents hopefully help) and or see dividend.

Shareholders have influence over the companies strategy and therefor

Originally Posted by Jomz

Patents, belong to the primary research company, which employs the researcher - which might be either a company or a national lab.
Cummins has rights over the patent developed in our group. https://www.google.com/patents/US20150219027

A patent belongs to whoever files for and is subsequently awarded the patent. The knowledge, research, IPR etc can come from all sort of other parties and or individuals. You detail that out in a contract, or in some case the law has some default provisions.

E.g. in Europe IPR is with the original ‘author’ by default by law. Unless that author is an employee of a company in which case the IPR, by law, belongs to the company. (very simplified, IPR and patent laws are unbelievable complex).

Whereas I’m fine with government stimulating (fundamental) research through grants to researcher (which is actually most of the EC research as per the link you provide I believe). These researchers are held to the normal scientific publication norms etc. So what they do ends up in the public domain and can be used by others.

Where I draw the line is if the funded research is done by one or a limited number of commercial enterprise(s) who subsequently use it in their products and services. For me that is just a state subsidy. The state/governement should not be providing competitive advantages to a single or limit number of parties. I believe in an even playing field.

Jeroen

[acurafan]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Neither Stanford or the Santa Fe Science institute or any scientific independent research facility hold many patents. Their purpose is to facilitate, promote and conduct scientific research. Nothing else. Mind you, Stanford has an endowment fund of over 20 billion USD, but that is something different.

It all depends on what you agree in your ‘research contract’.

Jeroen

+1, I work for a company which probably has one of the largest collection of patents and we spend millions every year funding universities. There are very different grants.
We have funded projects in universities where the condition was that we get all intellectual rights and inventors cannot even publish. This is the most expensive grant where universities take a sizeable cut before the funding reaches the research group(s). There are grants where the researchers can publish but we have exclusive rights to the IPs and in some cases we have the first right to refusal but university retains the IP.
Then there are charitable/non-charitable gifts where the researchers can do whatever they want with the money as long as they don't drink and gamble with it
The charitable and non-charitable part is determined based on whether we can claim tax benefit or not.

But make no mistake if you do not write a water tight legal contract then the technology transfer department in the university will come hard at the company. Recent incidents with CMU and UWisconsin are good indicators of that.

I have been on both sides of these grants as a researcher and funding agency. For some grants university owns the patents which they later licensed to the company for a royalty and as an academic inventor we got 30% of the proceeds. For some grants all we got from the company was a patent plaque and couple of thousand dollars. Similarly for one of the gift fund every one who was part of the paper could travel to the conference.

[Jomz]

"Neither Stanford or the Santa Fe Science institute or any scientific independent research facility hold many patents"

Sorry, can't help you with such a reasoning. Anyway we are way off topic.

Some examples of patents owned by national labs on automotive field.

http://www.swri.org/patentsdb/ViewPatentList.asp

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Where I draw the line is if the funded research is done by one or a limited number of commercial enterprise(s) who subsequently use it in their products and services. For me that is just a state subsidy. The state/governement should not be providing competitive advantages to a single or limit number of parties. I believe in an even playing field.

Jeroen

Just your opinion, In America it is still known as research grant. Feel free to complain.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by acurafan

But make no mistake if you do not write a water tight legal contract then the technology transfer department in the university will come hard at the company. Recent incidents with CMU and UWisconsin are good indicators of that.

Thanks, I agree. I’m far an expert in these matters but from what I have seen and been involved to date, IPR and Patent laws are incredibly complex. Especially in an international setting. I was out at Stanford with, amongst others, our Head of R&D and our head of legal of our IPR/Patent division, so I got to listen in to their discussion with the Stanford folks. Very interesting.

In my day job I usually don’t have much to do with our R&D and Patent division. Many years ago, when we introduced a new HR system and all the jobs needed reclassification in terms of description, salary, bonus etc, I was on our internal committee to deal with employee complaints who felt they were incorrectly assessed and plotted into the new system. One of them was what we call a patent officer. I thought I was reasonably familiar with just about all the jobs in our company, or at least had some idea what the job was about. This one was completely new to me, so I spend a lot of time trying to understand what a patent officer does and how he fitted into our system. Very enlightening.

Originally Posted by Jomz

"
Just your opinion, In America it is still known as research grant. Feel free to complain.

The internet is all about opinion. I have yet to come across facts on any social media. One mans fact is the other man’s opinion.

But you know what they say;

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Feel free to disagree, just your opinion.

Jeroen

[Jomz]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

T

In my day job I usually don’t have much to do with our R&D and Patent division. Many years ago, when we introduced a new HR system and all the jobs needed reclassification in terms of description, salary, bonus etc, I was on our internal committee to deal with employee complaints who felt they were incorrectly assessed and plotted into the new system. One of them was what we call a patent officer. I thought I was reasonably familiar with just about all the jobs in our company, or at least had some idea what the job was about. This one was completely new to me, so I spend a lot of time trying to understand what a patent officer does and how he fitted into our system. Very enlightening.

I do work with corporate Research and development in automotive. I am listed as an inventor on a patent and I have publications. I did research on taxpayer money and I was told that was done to change the focus/ thinking of market.

I don't need to convince others/ change their opinion. I just list facts!

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Jomz

I do work with corporate Research and development in automotive. I am listed as an inventor on a patent and I have publications. I did research on taxpayer money and I was told that was done to change the focus/ thinking of market.

I don't need to convince others/ change their opinion. I just list facts!

And you believed that this is, indeed, an appropriate way to change to focus/thinking of the market into what?

I’m not necessarily interested in convincing others or changing their opinion either. If anything I keep changing my opinion all the time.

I come from a very classic type of schooling, where everything you are taught whatever you see and hear, challenge and question to better understand it! I’m not an expert in any field, far from it. But I can ask questions and challenge about just any topic under the sun! If anything it’s always interesting to me and I often learn a lot. Which means I can question and challenge even better!

Obviously an opinion, as I don’t do facts.

I suggest to stick to discussing buying, owning, driving and Maintaining a car in North America. A hugely interesting and entertaining topic, absolutely rife with opinion! Just the way I like it!

Jeroen

[Jomz]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

And you believed that this is, indeed, an appropriate way to change to focus/thinking of the market into what?

On the Supertruck project. It was a way in which manufacturers were awarded money to develop trucks which almost doubled in mpg in 2 years.

Typical marketing direction is 3-5% improvement on mpg permodel year. Having these trucks out there, will put pressure on marketing to market these technologies faster, which is a perspective change.

http://energy.gov/eere/articles/supe...uel-efficiency
http://energy.gov/eere/vehicles/arti...ss-8-long-haul

there are quite a bit confidential projects too, but this is the project which I worked on, which is out in the public.

[Samurai]

Please stick to topic. Leave the politics & business out of this thread. - Support Team.

[amitoj]

My friend just went and bought a new Hyundai Genesis over the weekend, just on the spur.
I wish I could buy cars like that!!

[guyfrmblr]

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr

After hunting for a pre-owned car for 2 weeks, got a 2006 Nissan Altima 3.5 SL V6. It has 90,000 miles on the odo. The car is well maintained by the previous owner.

Quoting my post from April. It's almost 6 months after the purchase and have driven it for around 20,000 miles. The odo stands at 1,10,000 miles now. The car is absolutely brilliant to drive and have taken it for very long drives to Chicago, Indianapolis, Washington D.C, etc from Boston. Had couple of oil changes. Planning to give it for a winter check-up this month. My mileage conscious friends had then advised me to stick to boring Corollas and Camrys but I think it was a good decision to go with this V6 monster. The FE is generally 25 MPG on highways and 17 MPG in high density areas. Again my mileage conscious friends always make fun of me by comparing the FE with their highly efficient Corollas but who cares - the car is a blast to drive. The only grouse with the car is that I'm unable to properly utilize the V6 power on these highways with silly speed limits

[amitoj]

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr

The only grouse with the car is that I'm unable to properly utilize the V6 power on these highways with silly speed limits

Use it when getting ON the highway

Thanks for the update on your ownership. Altimas and Maximas are known to run for miles and miles!

[VIPER_SRT]

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr

Again my mileage conscious friends always make fun of me by comparing the FE with their highly efficient Corollas but who cares - the car is a blast to drive. The only grouse with the car is that I'm unable to properly utilize the V6 power on these highways with silly speed limits

Rules are meant to break Get a passport or Valentine1, will be a good investment down the line...
I had a 2001 Nissan Maxima 20th Anniversary Edition, enjoyed every bit of it. Nissan's are fun to drive. Good luck to many more miles

[kraft.wagen]

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr

It's almost 6 months after the purchase and have driven it for around 20,000 miles.
My mileage conscious friends had then advised me to stick to boring Corollas and Camrys but I think it was a good decision to go with this V6 monster.
The only grouse with the car is that I'm unable to properly utilize the V6 power on these highways with silly speed limits

Great to hear you are enjoying your car. Altimas are definitely much better than Camry in terms of handling and comfort.

like amitoj said, use the V6 power to enter the freeway.