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Who 'Owns' the Google Driverless Car IP?
theodp writes "Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently revealed that he is now leading Google's efforts to ready a driverless car for the consumer market, but one big, publicly-unanswered question is: Who exactly owns the intellectual property behind the highly-touted vehicles? To develop the Google Car, the company said it tapped 'the very best engineers from the DARPA Challenges,' a series of autonomous vehicle races organized by the U.S. government which provided university teams with millions in development funding and millions more in prizes. Last year, Carnegie Mellon reported that 8 of the 15-member Google Car team had current or past ties to DARPA Challenge participants CMU and Stanford. Whether Google's sponsorship of the Stanford Racing Team and CMU Tartan Racing entitled it to the IP is unclear. Clouding matters further is that key Google Car Team members are listed as inventors of autonomous car technology in pending patents assigned to the likes of General Motors and Toyota, and it was reported that the credit (and liability) for another key team member's successful robotic, autonomous Prius project was his-and-his-alone, not Google's. Could another party lay claims to the technology, or does Google have all of its IP ducks in a row on this one?"
I am not a scientist nor a statistician, but I am fairly certain more than one person has died in an automobile accident. In fact some died in accidents that were the result of poor car design.
How would this be any different?
If the team members are working for and/ or with Google on the project, Google can use their work on the project. Unless Google is using technology from peoples' work outside the team, there is no way a problem should arise. So, unless someone has proof that Google is in fact using work from people outside the development team or work that the members clearly state falls outside what they are doing for Google, where is there a problem?
For that matter, is this just Slashdot speculation or does one of those links actually point to a TFA (full of speculation)? Because I couldn't find one. Seriously, summaries are summaries. Don't try to turn them into not-quite-full articles themselves please Slashdot.
Also, is this actually a question someone is answering? Again, I skimmed all the links and couldn't find it. Even the last link didn't (seem to) say anything about Levandowski (the unnamed "key" team member) claiming the IP was his-and-his alone (although I may have missed it.)
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently revealed that he is now leading Google's efforts to ready a driverless car for the consumer market, but one big, publicly-unanswered question is: Who exactly owns the intellectual property behind the highly-touted vehicles?
In my opinion, it's a sad, sad reflection of our current technological atmosphere that "Who exactly owns the intellectual property behind the highly-touted vehicles?" is the big, publicly-unanswered question, far ahead of, say, "How is it going to work?", "What infrastructure will need to be in place for it to work?", "How much will it cost?", "What sort of services and/or functionality will it supply?", or "What's the underlying technology?", each of which are either vital considerations to the actual functioning of the car or just would be really really interesting and cool to know.
Hell, the fact that it even rates above "What are the legal ramifications of such a device?" or more specifically "How are road laws going to change with these devices on the road?" paints a picture I don't think anyone commissioned.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
You missed the part about deaths occurring due to poor engineering in automobiles. This has already happened and the company involved still exists.
Flip side: With these cars, any accidents that occur have extensive telemetry data recorded including stuff like throttle, brakes and steering, but also data from cameras and laser data.
So in the court room the data can be played back in 3d with complete accuracy.
Why is Slashdot trying to create the impression of a scandal when there isn't one? What is theodp hoping to gain from his FUD?
There is no links to make between responsability and IP rights. If Google decides to produce, market and sell a driverless car, it doesn't mean they need to own all the IP rights on the technology inside the product. Most car manufacturers don't own all the IP rights for the technology they include in their cars. The main point here, they are selling these cars, so they are making money from them and then they are responsible. It has nothing to do with IP ownership. You are responsible for what you sell and because you selected technology X, Y, Z to produce and include in your product. Many cars are including embedded computers these days and the OS and other software components IP rights are not owned by the car manufacturers. Same thing for software in avionics and so on. No, sorry, because you are selling a product including technology X doesn't entitle you to claim IP rights on it. You just have to pay the royalities to the owner. And it doesn't engage the responsability of the owner neither in regard of eventual casualities. Only the manufacturer that make and sell the product is liable. It is up to him to negociate with the IP owner for the royalities.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Who 'Owns' the Google Driverless Car IP?
Google, obviously. Since they have "the" IP address for all these driverless cars, how will drivers' private data be protected?!
Because there's nothing worse than disorganized ducks.
Except this kind of thing has been dealt with in the aviation industry before. There are many, many incidents where pilots override the autopilot and cause a crash. The same will happen here - many incidents where people who "know better" try to do something stupid and crash the car, when an automated system would have protected them. If an accident occurs, the telemetry can be used to determine why it happened and prevent it in future. If something really horrendous happens, then a recall will be issued while a software update is made. Eventually, the technology will mature to the point where it is factually safer than human drivers and I, for one, cannot wait. The usefulness and benefits from these automated cars cannot be overstated. They will be safer, they will be more efficient (both in terms of congestion and fuel efficiency as they can maintain specific speeds to help both) and frankly, they'll be more comfortable.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
You left out the best part, we can start drinking in cars! No more expensive taxi rides, just have the car take you home after a night at the bar.
Think of all the lives saved by DWI no longer being a problem.
WTF are you talking about? The best part is that we can have actual working JONNY CABS! Pay the fare or it'll TRY TO MURDER YOU. That's the future I want to live in.
I also presume it'll somehow lead to women with three breasts. Definitely the future I want to live in.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
In the case of an accident, Google would do what most other companies do. Offer a reasonably large settlement offer now to avoid the prospect of a 2 decade long court battle to possibly win more. Besides, chances are good that Google's car will likely cause far fewer accidents than human driven cars would, so they wouldn't need nearly as large of a settlement budget that conventional car companies do. Also, in the case of an accident, there is a huge flood of data available to the engineers to determine the exact cause of the problem and implement a solution to prevent a similar accident from happening in the future. The patch can then be applied to ALL of their vehicles currently on the road without requiring an expensive recall action.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Because in this case it would be Google's fault if someone dies. If someone dies because of his own hand then he can only blame himself...
For now perhaps, but once the technology matures we could just as easily hold manual car manufacturers responsible for any accidents caused by human error. Seat belts and airbags are required safety features now, I imagine one day automated driving will be as well.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Insurance companies will do what they always do. Try to avoid every major payment that they can and, in the future, when they have a statistically relevant sample set on these cars, they will set the rates in a way to ensure that they make money.
Google would have to weigh the potential litigation costs of these auto-cars against the money they could make selling them. They would then make them or not depending on if they see a net positive to the operation financially.
Personally, I don't see any way that driverless cars or auto cars or whatever you want to call them will ever be sold to the public without some legislation being passed concerning them. Either limiting damage claims, or having governments take a major role in the systems.
Everyone wants to think they are 'above average'. Most are not.
I'd say pretty much exactly half of everyone is (or isn't) 'above average' :-)
And yeah, not seeing the big problem here. Insurance will take care of accidents and liabilities, as it has for public transport, taxis, aviation etc, and as soon as self-driving cars get demonstrably better (on average) than the average human driver, the insurance will be cheaper than driving manually.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Hate to break it to you, but we're not living out "Fight Club". There are many different alleged "smoking gun" memos, but the one I'm most familiar with is the Ford memo. I won't tell you what you think it said, but I will tell you what it really said: NHTSA allowed that safety improvements that would cost more than $200K per life saved were not cost effective. In 1973, NHTSA wanted to change safety standards to reduce the posibility of a post-rollover fire. Ford then wrote and circulated a memo that showed that the compliance costs for that change were 3x the NHTSA threshold and should be opposed. Now for me, personally, an appropriate regime would be to have the auto manufacturers put a notice on the steering wheel, to be removed by the first owner, that says "We're insured to $X dollars in the event of death due to a design flaw." If that number is too low for you, buy a different car.