Patent law: It’s not rocket science.

Erm…uh…well.. maybe it is a little bit.

Boeing Patent Shuts Down AMC-14 Lunar Flyby Salvage Attempt

However, SpaceDaily has now learned that a plan to salvage AMC-14 was abandoned a week ago when SES gave up in the face of patent issues relating to the lunar flyby process used to bring wayward GEO birds back to GEO Earth orbit.

Sources have told SpaceDaily that it was possible to bring AMC-14 back via the moon to a stable GEO orbit where the high powered satellite would have been able to operate for at four years and probably longer.

In the face of unrelated legal battles between the current patent owner Boeing and the satellite’s owner SES Americom - any efforts to salvage AMC-14 have been cast aside.

Primarily this is because SES is currently suing Boeing for an unrelated New Skies matter in the order of $50 million dollars - and Boeing told SES that the patent was only available if SES Americom dropped the lawsuit.

This entry was posted by T. Colin Dodd on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Truth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.