Copyright, intellectual property and innovation Essay

Copyright, intellectual property and innovation - Essay Example It can be difficult for a developer to prove a new piece of software is theirs, especially when an unscrupulous competitor starts claiming they made it, and claiming huge amounts of money from the developer. Property rights are a complete nightmare for the small company or ordinary person who simply wants to develop software for its own sake and wishing to make a small profit while doing so. Copyright is one area of protection that should be straightforward, but it is not. Patenting software seems a good idea, but this can be difficult, time consuming and expensive. Intellectual property rights means’ software has to be proven to be unique, which is not always possible at the start of a project where such thinking may not even occur. For as the project begins, from the moment the first code is written and an idea aired, there is the danger of theft. For the public who want to use the software, there are problems not of their making in all the property rights, such as serious t ime delays in getting something up to date and useful for them. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) have only been in existence since 1967, and software has only been recognised as needing protection since the late 1970’s, before that it was not considered very important and was usually supplied by the company who built the hardware as a complete entity. Once it was realised that software could be a separate product with its own market value, and then it started to become important to protect it. Later the type of thing that could be protected was argued over by software companies unclear as to what was in the common domain and what was completely theirs. A few years ago there was a massive argument between Apple computers and Microsoft over the use of the Trash Can in their respective operating systems. Apple claiming their right to it as their invention and Microsoft saying it was something in the public domain, needed by any operating system. The argument went

Car aerodynamics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Car aerodynamics - Essay Example An aerodynamic automobile is designed to streamline the wind, it does not have piercing edges that cross the wind stream above the windshield and have a type of tail, which is called a liftback or Kammback or fastback. Different automotive companies like the Volkswagen, Loremo and Aptera, try to reduce the tail area of their small vehicles like the 1-liter models. They are designed to have a smooth and flat floor for the Venturi effect to be supported and generate the desired downwards-aerodynamic energy. The wind entering the engine cove is used for combustion, passengers and cooling, and then it is re-injected by an outlet under the floor. Air is slowed and pressurized in a diffuser for rear and mid engines, it loses a little pressure while it is passed through the engine cove and is filled in the slipstream. A seal between the high pressure around the gearbox and low pressure area around the wheels is required by these cars. The suspension in these cars is either retracted or stre amlined and the engine cove floor is closed. Streamlined shape is given to the roof rails, antenna and door handle. A round fairing as a nose is given to side mirrors. Though racing cars need airflow through the wheel base for break cooling and a lot of air is emitted from the radiator into the wheel bay, it is said to cause increase in drag. â€Å"Most aerodynamic design work is actually done initially on a computer, then the design is checked and modified by placing a vehicle with that design in a wind tunnel† (Erjavec 158). Wind tunnel and computer modeling are used to analyze and study automotive aerodynamics. The tunnel is sometimes furnished with a rolling road to achieve most accurate results from a wind tunnel test. The rolling road is a movable floor like the floor of at treadmill and moves at a particular speed as the air flows in. This affects the results by preventing the formation of a boundary