Vibration Control of Flexible Solar Panel by Tether Tension
- Paper number
IAC-05-C2.P.23
- Author
Mr. Hiroyuki Fukudome, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
- Coauthor
Prof. Hironori A. Fujii, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
- Coauthor
Mr. Kazuma Sekikawa, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
- Year
2005
- Abstract
Human mankind has had a huge dream of leaving the Earth, and challenges himself in space. To achieve this dream, several legal issues came up. Some of them had already been solved before the technology got to the point to refer to it (mostly in the first 3 decades of space age). Though the advance of law, in last decades more and more legal issues are coming up with hardly any solution. To support the dreams, legal background has to be solid. One corner stone of these questions is related to intellectual property and more precisely to patents. The aim of the paper is to present the basic conflict of patent law and space law. After delimitation and possible interfaces of the two legal fields, I give possible answers for the following questions:
- How can accord monopoly and the principle of using outer space for the benefit of all states? Why are special issues the patentability of orbits and frequencies?
- If national law is used in outer space, which nation’s law is applicable in a mission of cooperation of more nations? (It happens that even the launching state definition is too large to define only one state competency, such as the case was in Sea launch project)
- How to detect the infringement in space?
- How to solve sovereignty, jurisdiction, and territoriality issues?
- How can range questions of competent court to exclude the possibility of forum shopping?
- How can keep the aim of protection of intellectual property, such as insure economical advantage to the inventor with monopoly, if the monopoly shouldn’t exist in space?
As a conclusion to keep the space industry going on a less risky way, a kind of harmonization is needed in patent law. This paper wishes to propose some solutions (e.g. a global regulation through WIPO, or directly by the UN), while keeping in mind, that the field of application is special, so the rules should adapt to the special conditions.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-C2.P.23.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.