{"id":19613,"date":"2015-09-01T19:37:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/blue-origins-rocket-landing-patent-canceled-in-victory-for-spacex\/"},"modified":"2015-09-01T19:37:31","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:37:31","slug":"blue-origins-rocket-landing-patent-canceled-in-victory-for-spacex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/blue-origins-rocket-landing-patent-canceled-in-victory-for-spacex\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin\u2019s rocket-landing patent canceled in victory for SpaceX"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The \u201cautonomous spaceport drone ship\u201d that SpaceX built to recover the Falcon 9 first stage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture has capitulated to Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX in a dispute over a Blue Origin patent covering the landing of rockets at sea.<\/p>\n

In an order made public today, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted a motion to cancel the remaining 13 of 15 claims in the Blue Origin rocket-landing patent. Blue Origin itself had made the motion to cancel those claims, effectively acknowledging that its case was lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jeff
Amazon\u2019s founder, Jeff Bezos, inspects Blue Origin\u2019s launch facility in West Texas before a test flight in April. (Credit: Blue Origin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., has separately filed a \u201creissue\u201d patent application covering the same general area. However, SpaceX has already attempted multiple rocket landings at sea and would likely be grandfathered in, allowing it to continue the practice, even if Blue Origin were to ultimately succeed in securing a valid patent.<\/p>\n

SpaceX had already won a key early round in March in its attempt to invalidate the Blue Origin patent.<\/p>\n

Representatives of both companies declined to comment on the latest ruling.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin applied in June 2010 for the patent, \u201cSea landing of space launch vehicles and associated systems and methods<\/span>,\u201d outlining a system for launching a rocket from a coastal launch site and recovering the booster by landing it vertically, tail-first, on a platform at sea \u2014 using the booster engines to control the descent. The patent was granted in March of last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
A diagram from Blue Origin\u2019s patent.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SpaceX disputed the Blue Origin patent, <\/span>citing prior work by researchers and scientists who proposed techniques similar to those in Blue Origin\u2019s patent long before the patent was filed. \u201cThe \u2018rocket science\u2019 claimed in the \u2018321 patent was, at best, \u2018old hat\u2019 by 2009,\u201d wrote SpaceX in its petition<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., is focusing heavily on vertical landings as part of its overall approach to commercial spaceflight.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cautonomous spaceport drone ship\u201d that SpaceX built to recover the Falcon 9 first stage. Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture has capitulated to Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX in a dispute over a Blue Origin patent covering the landing of rockets at sea. In an order made public today, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,316],"class_list":["post-19613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}