STCs in public domain

Henning said:
I don't care what it contains, if you refer to data someone else developed, you are refering to their intellectual property. If you can get the FAA to sign off on that without an STC or another letter of permission, good for you. As long as nobody with a vested interest realizes it, you won't be sued, otherwise you will.
Click to expand...

Tom seems to be confusing two things... I've been down this road.


If an STC goes unsupported, and the FAA can't contact the owner, they can release the data in response to a FOIA. but they HATE to do that, 'cause if the owner later pops up, the FAA can be sued. I filed such a FOIA, and the FAA delayed for over a year.


Finally, through another route, I located the owner... Living as a hermit off the grid, through mutual friends whom he trusted (he'd become quite paranoid, hence the move off grid) the STC was purchased.


Now all that was to get parts drawings for an STC I already held.


The FAA gave no indication they'd cooperate with using that STC on a different aircraft. I think the requirement to prove rights still stands...there's no seizure of those rights by the FAA as Tom supposes. Certainly a law might be passed to enable that... But none exists that any of us, including Tom, seems to know about.


Now of course there's no telling what some inspector might have done once... But heck, sometimes inspectors go to jail.


Paul
 
Henning said:
How do STCs enter the Public Domain?
Click to expand...

In maybe 2002 I attended an FAA briefing (for DAL) in Chicago on compliance with SFAR88 rules that were in the works. SFAR88 rules require that wires with certain energy levels not be routed in the proximity of wiring that could conduct the energy into a fuel tank and become a potential source of ignition.

This whole effort required a review of how wiring was routed in commercial aircraft when STCs were incorporated. All of that analysis amounted to a lot of work. At the meeting the FAA floated the idea that STC holders might need to issue service bulletins the way airframe and engine TC holders do.

Many companies hold STCs as a result of acquisitions and mergers and their business plan does not include engineering support for legacy products. At the meeting the FAA also suggested that companies that had non-compliant STC could also surrender them to the FAA. That of course begged the question, who would update the package, the FAA certainly did not have the resources.

I don't know what the FAA final position on some of those tangential topics was. Ultimately, the airline did their own review of modification wire routing , which was a hell of a lot of work. SFAR88 wire routing as well as new rules for maintenance of electrical wring as a system (with required checks in the maintenance program) is now part of approval checklist to obtain new STCs.

This discussion makes me wonder if the public domain STCs are ones surrendered because the original holder could not maintain them.
 
kontiki said:
In maybe 2002 I attended an FAA briefing (for DAL) in Chicago on compliance with SFAR88 rules that were in the works. SFAR88 rules require that wires with certain energy levels not be routed in the proximity of wiring that could conduct the energy into a fuel tank and become a potential source of ignition.

This whole effort required a review of how wiring was routed in commercial aircraft when STCs were incorporated. All of that analysis amounted to a lot of work. At the meeting the FAA floated the idea that STC holders might need to issue service bulletins the way airframe and engine TC holders do.

Many companies hold STCs as a result of acquisitions and mergers and their business plan does not include engineering support for legacy products. At the meeting the FAA also suggested that companies that had non-compliant STC could also surrender them to the FAA. That of course begged the question, who would update the package, the FAA certainly did not have the resources.

I don't know what the FAA final position on some of those tangential topics was. Ultimately, the airline did their own review of modification wire routing , which was a hell of a lot of work. SFAR88 wire routing as well as new rules for maintenance of electrical wring as a system (with required checks in the maintenance program) is now part of approval checklist to obtain new STCs.

This discussion makes me wonder if the public domain STCs are ones surrendered because the original holder could not maintain them.
Click to expand...

Very interesting twist.....:hairraise:...
 
PaulMillner said:
Tom seems to be confusing two things... I've been down this road.

If an STC goes unsupported, and the FAA can't contact the owner, they can release the data in response to a FOIA. but they HATE to do that, 'cause if the owner later pops up, the FAA can be sued. I filed such a FOIA, and the FAA delayed for over a year.

Finally, through another route, I located the owner... Living as a hermit off the grid, through mutual friends whom he trusted (he'd become quite paranoid, hence the move off grid) the STC was purchased.

Now all that was to get parts drawings for an STC I already held.

The FAA gave no indication they'd cooperate with using that STC on a different aircraft. I think the requirement to prove rights still stands...there's no seizure of those rights by the FAA as Tom supposes. Certainly a law might be passed to enable that... But none exists that any of us, including Tom, seems to know about.

Now of course there's no telling what some inspector might have done once... But heck, sometimes inspectors go to jail.

Paul
Click to expand...
this brings up several questions for me.

You stated the FAA would not allow you to use the STC on a different aircraft. Was the STC a one time STC or was the different aircraft not on the application list?

The Answer to those two questions requires a different approach.

What are you asking when you ask the controlling ACO for approval to use an unsupported STC? I've never heard of using the FOIA to do that.
 
kontiki said:
In maybe 2002 I attended an FAA briefing (for DAL) in Chicago on compliance with SFAR88 rules that were in the works. SFAR88 rules require that wires with certain energy levels not be routed in the proximity of wiring that could conduct the energy into a fuel tank and become a potential source of ignition.

This whole effort required a review of how wiring was routed in commercial aircraft when STCs were incorporated. All of that analysis amounted to a lot of work. At the meeting the FAA floated the idea that STC holders might need to issue service bulletins the way airframe and engine TC holders do.

Many companies hold STCs as a result of acquisitions and mergers and their business plan does not include engineering support for legacy products. At the meeting the FAA also suggested that companies that had non-compliant STC could also surrender them to the FAA. That of course begged the question, who would update the package, the FAA certainly did not have the resources.

I don't know what the FAA final position on some of those tangential topics was. Ultimately, the airline did their own review of modification wire routing , which was a hell of a lot of work. SFAR88 wire routing as well as new rules for maintenance of electrical wring as a system (with required checks in the maintenance program) is now part of approval checklist to obtain new STCs.

This discussion makes me wonder if the public domain STCs are ones surrendered because the original holder could not maintain them.
Click to expand...

The only methods I am aware of for the intellectual property to enter the public domain is voluntary surrender or for them to time out (depends on the type of property when, if ever, that occurs). Now a mechanism could be written into the law to allow for it pretty simply and fairly much as a 'lien sale' functions, however I am not aware of it existing at this time.
 
Does the Freedom of Information Act have an exception for intellectual property?
 
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