[Mukund]

The most-popular vehicle in the U.S. -- the F-Series truck -- is among the many Ford Motor Co. products using stolen technologies to run its newest fuel-efficient engines, according to three Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors who say they invented the enhancements.

With Ford selling two trucks every minute and generating about $42 billion in revenue last year from the F-Series alone, the MIT inventors are demanding an unspecified share of the proceeds. In a lawsuit filed Jan. 30, they say their patented dual port- and direct-injection technology were added to the company’s EcoBoost engines in recent years without permission.

The dispute marks a split in the long collaboration between MIT and Ford, which created a joint energy-research program in 2007 to focus on powertrain, fuel and energy technologies. A separate MIT Energy Initiative paired Ford personnel with university researchers. Chairman Bill Ford, great-grandson of the automaker’s founder Henry Ford, received a masters degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1984.

But by 2015, the company suggested the professors were “greedy inventors” and refused offers to negotiate exclusive rights to license the patents, the lawsuit alleges.

MIT professors Leslie Bromberg, Daniel R. Cohn and John B. Heywood, who have been working for decades on improvements to internal-combustion engines, say they invented dual-injection technologies that allow for better fuel-and-air mixing and combustion stability than direct injection, with less engine knock.

Source.

[roy_libran]

Too early to call, but -

1. Did Ford invest in/sponsor the research - I think so
2. Were the Profs trying to run away with the fruits of that research -Possibly

I am sure there is a dispute in the heart of this matter.
Let's see how this develops.

[Leoshashi]

Reminds me of this movie which was based on a similar story:

https://youtu.be/0Biy-okZ0l8