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Baumgartner's Daredevil Parachute Jump From Space Put On Hold
Velcroman1 writes "For years, an Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner has been planning to take a 23-mile plunge from the edge of space — and in the process, become the first parachutist to break the sound barrier, plummeting toward the ground at 760 miles per hour. The engineers and scientists behind The Red Bull Stratos project, an effort to break the record for the highest freefall ever, billed the jump as more than a stunt. The leap from 120,000 feet was to yield volumes of data that would have been used to develop advanced life support systems for future pilots, astronauts, and even space tourists. But a promoter feels that the jump was his idea, and filed a lawsuit in April to prevent the event from taking place. And now Red Bull has pulled the plug on the project, FoxNews.com reports. 'Due to the lawsuit, we have decided to stop the project until this case has been resolved,' Red Bull said."
Its a pretty ordinary name in german speaking countries. It basically means "The lucky tree gardener". Daredevil indeed.
Baumgartner is (as the article says) Austrian, so is Red Bull... Ah, and by the way. The guy who sued Red Bull for 'prior idea' (or whatever) is named Daniel Hogan. More infos here.
To error is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the OS.
He's actually saying that his specific plans for executing the jump were used by Red Bull after they reviewed and rejected the project. Those plans wouldn't be protectable if they were open knowledge, but given that he was shopping the plans around privately, looking for a partnership, the plans constitute a trade secret.
Trade secrets are the antithesis of most IP law. Once an idea's "out there", the protection disappears, as it should.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The WSJ story has a little more detail than the others. Turns out that Kittinger (the first guy to do anything like this, decades ago) used to work for Daniel Hogan as a consultant on the project. After the meetings with Red Bull, RB informed Hogan that the deal was off, and Kittinger started working for RB on a freshly minted version of the same thing.
The right answer here is, as usual, "who knows?" It looks like there might really be something to the case, and it needs litigating to resolve the problem.