Ricardo PLC

A CIPA case study

The founder of Ricardo plc filed his first patent a centruy ago. The company’s IP Manager Stephen Morris unearths sketches of car engines that have earned millions for automotive manufacturers around the world.

Sir Harry Ricardo filed his first patent application in 1906, for a two-stroke engine for the Dolphin car he had designed. That venture lasted only a few years, but the company that today still bears his name went on to design systems and components for many of the world’s great names in the automotive industry. Citroën, Bugattti, Roll-Royce, Bentley and Fiat were among the early manufacturers who took licences and paid royalties for the right to use Ricardo-designed engines, carburettors and transmission systems.

A century later, if you know where to look, you can find Ricardo technology inside many of the world’s best-selling cars, whether you’re in Asia, Europe or North America. Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Honda and Toyota all have had consultancy contracts or licence agreements with Ricardo plc. And it’s not only cars: engines designed with Ricardo support have gone into Harley-Davidson motorbikes, First World War tanks, London buses and taxis, aircraft and even JCB back-hoe diggers. Ricardo’s latest project for JCB involves acting as engine development partner for an attempt at the world speed record for a diesel car. With land speed record holder Wing Commander Andy Green at the wheel, the car is expected to reach 300mph.

Every time you fill your car up with fuel, you’re also looking at another Ricardo invention, the Octane Rating Scale, which the company’s founder devised in the 1920s.

Today, Ricardo is a stock exchange-listed company with a turnover of £160m, much of which comes from car manufacturers for technology that the company has developed and protected. It’s a business built on what is increasingly becoming the UK’s biggest export: know-how, codified and protected as intellectual property, in the form of patents.

Custodian of this treasure-trove is Ricardo’s IP manager, Stephen Morris. His daily work is demanding. Not only does he have to monitor the company’s existing 600 or so patents – watching for possible infringements and ensuring that renewals are kept up to date – but he also has to make sure that Ricardo’s engineers and designers know the rules about confidentiality and non-disclosure, so that projects they are working on can be patented. Today, he is working on about 150 current patent cases, and each case can involve several patents.

Stephen Morris’s role is principally one of co-ordination. He acts as the interface between Ricardo’s technical departments and Kilburn & Strode, the firm of patent attorneys that Sir Harry Ricardo first employed to file his patent in 1906.

“I’m not aware of many firms of patent attorneys that have been around for 100 years,” says Morris. “And I certainly don’t know of any automotive design company that has used the same firm of patent attorneys for all that time.” Another record to add to the many Ricardo has clocked up over the years.

Without an internationally enforceable patents system to protect Ricardo’s technology and know-how, the company would miss out on a valuable income stream. But that’s not to say that Stephen Morris wouldn’t like to see some improvements. “We work fast in this industry,” he explains. “We will often go from concept to prototype in a matter of months. As our business is built on patentable technology, we need to have the security of a patent as quickly as possible – preferably in 12 to 18 months. Using a fast-track approach, such as combined search and examination, our patent attorneys can often achieve this for us in the UK. But in Europe it can take up to four years, which just isn’t fast enough. And, unbelievably, the opposition process can take even longer. All the time European adjudication and appeals are going on, we’re left in limbo.”

On top of his official job, Stephen Morris also acts as Ricardo’s unofficial archivist. From a few dozen dusty cardboard boxes in the company’s attic, he has dug out a collection of rough drawings and handwritten notes that have earned more for their author than famous artists often get for their works of art. “Back in the early part of the 20th century, product design and patent registration was more straightforward than it is today,” says Stephen Morris, with just a hint of regret. His collection of priceless papers includes correspondence between Harry Ricardo and André Citroën – some of it handwritten – that led to engineering developments that were later patented by Ricardo. Other documents have sketches of components or even complete cars that formed the basis of successful patents, generating substantial long-term revenues.

It’s not only the engineering that was innovative. Some of Ricardo’s early commercial agreements were novel to a high degree. A favourite technique was to group related patents together and encourage manufacturers to take a licence on the whole bundle, payable as long as any of the patents remained in force. Another unusual approach favoured by Harry Ricardo was to relate the royalty payments to the engine capacity, not just to the number of engines manufactured. For example, a licence agreement with Austin in 1943, for a diesel engine combustion chamber, sets a royalty price of ten shillings per litre of engine capacity.

Morris has been so fascinated by Ricardo’s collection of old patent records that he has based an illustrated talk on them, ‘A century of hidden innovation’. So, on top of his day job, he now gets invited to address groups of engineers, inventors and even patent examiners, up and down the country.

In the 21st century, much of Ricardo’s work is focused on three areas: control electronics, hybrid vehicles and dynamic drive trains. This is driven by the industry’s increasing need to improve fuel efficiency and vehicle safety through intelligent engine and power train management and improved handling. Market demand for higher performance, safety and efficiency is tempered by government pressure to come up with technological solutions to environmental problems – carbon emissions reduction in particular. Hence a number of government-sponsored initiatives where Ricardo is playing an important role, such as the HyTrans project. This collaborative programme, based on a Ford Transit, has led to a micro-hybrid vehicle, using a diesel engine with a stop/start system provided through a combined starter-alternator. The result is a delivery vehicle that is economical, easy to drive and gives off around 20% less CO2 on a typical stop-start urban delivery cycle. The programme has been supported by Ford, with grants from the UK’s Department of Transport and the Energy Savings Trust.

Although most of Ricardo’s work is destined for high-volume, mass-produced vehicles, the company still has a strong presence in the specialist, high-performance end of the market. Ricardo designed the transmission for the Audi R8, which has claimed five victories in a row since 2000 at Le Mans. In April 2006, the Royal Automobile Club awarded the Dewar Trophy to Ricardo for ‘outstanding technical achievement in the support provided to Bugatti on the design and development of the Dual Clutch Transmission technology (DCT) for the Veyron supercar,’ which is protected by six patents.

Where does Stephen Morris believe Ricardo is heading over the next hundred years? “We’ll still be in transport design, although with a much greater emphasis on intelligent control systems. I expect our international operations to expand, especially in North America and China, but we have such a strong tradition of design excellence in the UK that I’m sure our main base will still be in this country.”

For more information, contact:

Peter Prowse: 01372 271234

Ted Blake, CIPA: 020 7405 9450

Stephen Morris, Ricardo Plc: 01273 455611

Gwilym Roberts, Kilburn & Strode: 020 7539 4200