FAA To Free Aircraft Hobbled By IP Laws

smellsofbikes writes "The FAA is attempting to develop a legal process that will allow them to release data about vintage aircraft designs that have obviously been abandoned. Existing laws restrict the FAA's ability to release this data because it is deemed to be intellectual property even though the owner of record has long since ceased to exist. This is fundamentally the same problem that copyright laws impose on people looking for out-of-print books. But in the case of vintage aircraft, the owners are legally required to maintain them to manufacturer specifications that the owners cannot legally obtain: an expensive and potentially lethal dilemma. If the FAA, notoriously hidebound and conservative, is willing to find a solution to this IP Catch-22, maybe the idea will catch on in other places."

Comments

Re:Safety concerns driving this

[chopper749]

This would apply to commercial airplanes IF the manufacturer is no longer around and no one
claims rights to the type certificate, AND you have one of the airplanes and need the data to
maintain it in a safe manner. If you just think it would be cool to see, it wouldn't
'enhance aviation safety' in anyway to release the details.

These documents wouldn't be "lost" with out this change. They are part of the Federal Records.
The type certificates contain all of the drawing and details required to build the aircraft.
If the company built a plane that didn't meet the type cert, it would not be certified as airworthy.
This just allows owners of the planes to keep them legally flyable.

Re:Bringing Back Old Aircraft

[MBGMorden]

Homebuilders can already make damned close copies (and safe ones at that) of just about any design out there. Indeed there are a bazillion copies of things like the Piper Cub out there flying - the look and flying pretty similar, and they are built using the same types of techniques, but underneath they aren't identical to an original cub (indeed most of the newer "copies" of aircraft like the cub are vastly superior to the original). The thing is that any homebuilt aircraft has to go under the Experimental-Homebuilt certification. While this entails a lot of freedom for the operator (there's not much you can't do in a homebuilt aircraft), it does have some limitations. Namely, the airplane cannot be used for hire (so they can't be rented out for instruction for example), and the builder is legally the manufacturer, so he comes under a lot of liability concerns if he ever sells the plane.

For old planes, unless you get a field approval (unlikely) or the mod falls under an STC (Special Type Certificate), repairs and rebuilds of components must be EXACTLY the same as the original if you are to keep the plane Certified as a regular aircraft. So it's not just an issue of rebuilding the plane to a safe working condition to keep it functioning - that's easy; it's a matter of rebuilding it back to exactly the way it was before. That's not so easy to guess at.

Of course, the Piper Cub is not a great example as total blueprints are apparently available for this one. Indeed, salvaged data-plates from wrecked Cubs go for $10k or so by themselves - as long as you have that you can literally build the plane from scratch according the original plans, stick the data plate on it, and it is legally the same plane as the one that was wrecked. Even though it was constructed form scratch, that whole process was considered a "repair" operation. The FAA is a strange critter :).