Satellite Abandoned Due To Orbital Patent

EreIamJH brings news about a commercial geostationary satellite that was launched last month. Due to a launch failure, the satellite did not reach the orbit required to perform its function. The satellite's owner, SES Americom, looked for a way to salvage the satellite, but ran into an unexpected hurdle; a Boeing patent on the lunar flyby process that would be used to correct the satellite's orbit. If another company doesn't purchase the satellite, it is likely to become another piece of space junk. The European Space Agency has posted a gallery of the maps they have put together for man-made debris in orbit around the earth.

Comments

They can patent that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! I'm going to have to start patenting all those 'inventions' by Newton. The first one I'm going to call gravity (TM).

Re:They can patent that?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bad name and will never be approved. A better one is "a procedure to transport a payload from one point to another by the use of an attractive force that is proportional to the mass of the payload and a reference object and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance of separation between the respective centers of mass". This one will be approved in a heartbeat and you can immediately use it to sue the airlines. See if you can get an injunction to prevent airplanes in flight from violating your patent. And if they crash you can sue the estates of the passengers!

Re:They can patent that?

[pieterh]

No, this is a myth. New ideas get shared because they are very hard to keep secret. Patents do not promote disclosure of ideas that can be kept secret, they protect ideas that will inevitably be shared or reinvented in any case.

And since patented ideas cannot be reused or expanded on, patents reduce the sharing and reuse of knowledge, they do not promote it. Overall, patents are very harmful for technological progress. This is why, e.g. oil companies collect patents on solar power, and telecoms firms collect patents on VoIP.

The real purpose of patents is to make money for patent holders, patent experts, and patent lawyers. Anyone who says differently is lying or ignorant. Period.

Re:They can patent that?

[dabadab]

New ideas get shared because they are very hard to keep secret.

And that, my liege, is why patents were not meant to apply to ideas but to actual inventions.
Having the idea that some elastic stuff would come really handy, but that's just an idea that anyone can come up with. But, on the other hand, the process of vulcanization is an entirely different beast: it can be kept a secret rather effectively and it really takes some hard work (or huge luck) to come up with that.

Re:They can patent that?

[betterunixthanunix]

No offense, but this cure should be general knowledge. Medical patents are below software patents on the scale of grotesque abuses of the patent system. First of all, if this cure was patented, it is unlikely that it would ever find its way to third world countries, especially unstable nations in Africa. This has been the case with AIDS medication in the past -- the governments of those countries are told that they risk economic sanctions if they try to infringe on the patents, and medical companies refuse to sell the medicines in countries where they are unlikely to turn a profit.

There are a very, very limited set of cases where patents are a good thing, and medicine is about as far as you can get from those cases. Telling people that they cannot make the medicine they need because you have a patent on it and it wouldn't be profitable to sell it in a poor region is a disgrace.

Re:They can patent that?

[betterunixthanunix]

Considering that many of the medicines that are routinely used these days were discovered before drug patents, I would say that you are just completely misinformed. Drug patents have one interesting side effect though: some people are unable to get the medicine they need, because the drug companies refuse to sell it in a region where they are not likely to turn a profit, and the governments of those regions are told they face economic sanctions if they tolerate patent infringement. Drug patents are a disgrace that worsen an already bad medical situation in Africa.

Re:They can patent that?

[SharpFang]

This is why, e.g. oil companies collect patents on solar power [snip] Not so that they alone can make money off of solar power once the oil runs out? By then the patents will be expired.

But currently you can't improve the technology basing on patents they hold, so you can't create competition worth speaking of.

Patents have a relatively short lifespan. But it's not 'I can't produce X because it's patented' that hurts worst. It's 'I can't design, produce and manufacture a far superior Y of which X is a part'.

Re:They can patent that?

[iminplaya]

If it crashes into a graveyard, my patented algorithm will determine where to bury the survivors.

What a ridiculous waste

[seifried]

What a ridiculous waste of time, money and energy. This is sickening.

This is what happens...

[ulash]

...when common sense does not prevail. The company and Boeing need to come to an agreement of sorts in order to avert the turning of the satellite into space debris. We already have enough stuff out there. The fact that there is no explicit "cost" to the company, of leaving something up there is the main reason for the seeming unwillingness for taking action.

Re:This is what happens...

[njfuzzy]

It's worth pointing out that Boeing only denied the request to license the patent because SES Americom is suing them over something else. So really this isn't a case of "patents are evil" it is a case of "you reap what you sow".

Also, SES Americom has the option of selling the satellite to someone who might be able to get the license from Boeing. However, they have chosen to "splash" the satellite and collect their insurance money.

Dirty tricks all around by SES Americom, but less so by Boeing.

Abandon patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we just abandon the whole patent system?

Re:why don't they just

[seifried]

They are suing Boeing in another matter, Boeing told them they could use the patent if they drop the suit (50 million according to the article). Unlikely Boeing will license them the patent.

Re:why don't they just

[Detritus]

RTFA. There is an unrelated legal dispute between the two companies and Boeing wanted to tie the licensing of the patent to a settlement of that dispute.

Satellite to Earth:

[Ihlosi]

Send more lawyers !

Jurisdiction?

[Kooshman]

Does anybody know how this patent even has jurisdiction? I understood space to be a legal no-man's land, so any action taken there can't fall under the laws of any nation. Perhaps they could track it back to "sending the signals from earth", at which point you could do the same thing from international waters or an apathetic country.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally. Set up a shell company abroad, sell the satellite for 1 dollar to it, that company can fix the problem outside of the ridiculous patent, then sell the satellite back to SES.

How much did the satellite cost to build and launch? Presumably nowhere near $50m, and the sunk design cost can be reused.

Someone should tell the insurance company that the satellite is savable.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the patent is "valid", what jurisdiction would it have in space? None, I'm sure. So all SES Americom would have to do is relocate themselves into geosynchronous orbit, and Bob's your uncle!

Seriously though, from TFA:

Industry sources have told SpaceDaily that the patent is regarded as legal "trite", as basic physics has been rebranded as a "process", and that the patent wouldn't stand up to any significant level of court scrutiny and was only registered at the time as "the patent office was incompetent when it came to space matters".

So, it's a moot point. We can't really be sure why SES Americom isn't pursuing this. For all we know, they're confident they'd win---but it might screw their chances for a reasonable settlement on their other suit against Boeing.

Or, maybe, the satellite would have crashed into the sea by the time they got a resolution.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Loke the Dog]

It's basically the same as international waters, it depends on what flag you're flying. The owner is american, and that means the satellite is a tiny part of america. Thus, american patents apply to it.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[rah1420]

In space, no one can hear lawyers scream.

Jurisdiction?

[countach]

Even if the patent is "valid", what jurisdiction would it have in space?

Not yours. Go home and cry about it.

[pla]

a Boeing patent on the lunar flyby process that would be used to correct the satellite's orbit.

So this amounts to a patent on moving in a given direction? April first passed by almost two weeks ago. C'mon, guys, bad joke?

Unbelievable. We don't need patent reform, we need an angry mob to storm the USPTO and burn the place to dust, then sift through the dust and re-burn anything left, then haul the entire mess to a live volcano. You just can't have a monopoly on basic physics, Boeing, whether or not the rules allow it. Seriously, grow the fuck up and go back to competing with Airbus on technical merits rather than endless pissing contests with the WTO/WIPO.

Re:Please read whole story before writing summary

[BadAnalogyGuy]

splash the satellite

That's a euphemism for having sex with a pregnant woman. Well, it is now.

Re:Lunar flyby to fix geostationary orbit problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17659402

I wonder if the satellite is faulty...

[Keramos]

From the article:

a) Industry sources say the patent is basically worthless
b) Americom wants to collect it's insurance
c) Third party goes to insurer, says "We'll buy the satellite and recover it ourselves"
d) Insurer says "No one told us you could recover satellites" so we haven't taken possession of the satellite (if we did, we'd have to worry about getting rid of it, you see). BTW, good risk evaluation & mitigation, guys. I've got a sandcastle I'd like to insure for $50M vs. water damage. Interested?
e) Third party goes to Americom, says "We'll buy the satellite and recover it ourselves"
f) Americom ignores them, meanwhile tries real hard to de-orbit the satellite really quick.

Now, if this were a movie/book, sticking in "QA finds a problem in the satellite before launch, PHB's decide to launch it anyway, have an unfortunate, totally unforeseen and obviously accidental problem, ditch the unit and collect from insurance" somewhere would fit in naturally.

Hollywood is just a French movie's way of reproducing.

Re:Please read whole story before writing summary

[Digestromath]

You've got it all wrong!

'Splashing the satellite' is having wild and poorly aimed sex with a woman, while her uglier and less popular sister is in an uncomfortably close orbit.

Re:method patent

[foobsr]

ski jump instructions

Time to again draw attention to us patent 6368227: "A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_patent_number:6368227

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Einstein

CC.

here's the lunar flyby trajectory

[ChrisCampbell47]

I remember when they pulled off that lunar flyby method to save the satellite. It was May 1998 and the AsiaSat 3 launch had been presumed a complete failure, just like AMC-14 this time. The lunar flyby option uses the satellite's own fuel (instead of a booster) to slowly, over weeks, nudge the satellite's apogee further out until it reached the moon's orbit. It flew by the moon as the moon itself was flying around the earth, and the result was that the moon's gravity pulled the satellite in the right direction to get it going towards a useful GEO orbit.

I had that trajectory plot (done with AGI's STK, I think) as the desktop image on my computer for 3 years.

Here is what the trajectory looked like. The big tradeoff of this method is that you burn most of the satellite's fuel, fuel that was intended to be used over the 15-year life of the sat for stationkeeping. So you end up with a sat in GEO orbit but with much less lifetime. Better than nothing! Well, except for an insurance payout, I guess.

Doesn't add up

[evilviper]

Okay, so the patent won't stand up to scrutiny.

The company is already in court, suing Boeing on an unrelated issue.

But they won't risk violating this terrible patent, why? Clearly they're more than willing to risk a lawsuit from Boeing.

If the patent is so obviously invalid, it won't take much effort to fight and have it invalidated. And on the off chance they fail, they can argue the issue to a judge, who will decide the value of the infringement, as opposed to Boeing, who refuses to budge.

And time on a satellite is very, very expensive, so they will easily be making tens of millions of dollars on the deal, worst case.

This whole story makes no sense. Sounds like something even shadier is going on under the table, and they'd prefer to use this as cover.

You MORONS.

[MikShapi]

Were I thus inclined, I'd go for the biggest market out there - patent a "procedure to transfer one's hereditry information onto a partial duplicate of oneself or the recreational practice thereof, through the use of a pshysio-mechanical maneuver with an individual of the opposing sex..."

Re:You MORONS.

[justthisdude]

Were I thus inclined, I'd go for the biggest market out there - patent a "procedure to transfer one's hereditry information onto a partial duplicate of oneself or the recreational practice thereof, through the use of a pshysio-mechanical maneuver with an individual of the opposing sex..." After all the arguments over Homosexuality being inborn or a choice, it turns out it is just a work-around to avoid patent infringement!

Re:why don't they just

[tomhudson]

No - dumping the satellite and collecting the insurance is the smart thing to do. The satellite was supposed to have a 15 year lifespan. With the reduced fuel after the "patented application", it only has 4 years - so they're only going to get about 1/4 the revenue, and still have to launch another one. In other words, their satellite had already lost 3/4 of its' value no matter what.

Since this is slashdot, let's use a car analogy.

You buy a car, and you expect it to last 15 years (okay, you buy a JAPANESE car, and expect it to last 15 years), for $30k. However, just after you take it off the dealer's lot, it gets pretty much totalled. The insurance company will pay to fix it, but it will never be the same, and they've told you that after 4 years, you'll have to scrap it because the repairs will not last beyond that time. In other words, even after everything is "fixed", you'll have to fork out for another car within 4 years ...

You will have spent $60k for 2 cars, for 19 years of combined service, or more than $3k/year.

Or you can take the insurance payout for the full value and buy another new car that will last 15 years. The new car is, essentially, free, so you $30k investment for 15 years brings your cost down to $2k/year.

Scale up the numbers, and they hold true for the satellite company. Keeping the old one will saddle them with additional capital costs of almost 60%.

Re:method patent

[rhendershot]

This had to be a joke, thought I.

It isn't. Here's the USPTO page. OMG...

Patent Granted: Tarzan Swinging

Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measure the movements one would use to swing from vines in a dense jungle forest, the swinging method of the present invention may be referred to by the present inventor and his sister as "Tarzan" swinging. The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. Actual jungle forestry is not required.

Licenses are available from the inventor upon request.

Hopes of Insurance Payout

[Perl-Pusher]

SES has decided not to pursue any legal options against Boeing and wants to collect their insurance policy payout.

Why operate a satellite for years at diminishing returns when you can get an immediate big payoff? And as a side benefit the blame goes to a competitor whom your are engaged in a lawsuit with. Immoral? Not to them. Just businesses screwing each other. The Insurance company will pass the loss down the chain. Somewhere down the chain I figure I'm going to end up paying in a tax . Especially since the Fed and Congress are into the business of bailing out companies.

Re:method patent

[SharpFang]

Wouldn't Tarzan be a prior art?