SpaceX Files Appeals to Blue Origin’s Patent to Land Rockets on Barges
SpaceX has filed two appeals to Blue Origin’s patent on landing rockets on sea-going barges. The patent was granted earlier this year.
SpaceX, which plans to initially land the first stage of its reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a barge, says that the patent award should be overturned because the landing techniques described were already well known:
The reusable launch vehicle techniques described in Section IV above were known to persons of ordinary skill in the art by at least the late 1990s, but this fact went largely unnoticed by the patent owner during the original prosecution of the ‘321 patent. The Background portion of the ‘321 patent pays lip service to the existence of prior art reusable launch vehicles (RLVs), but does not describe them in any detail. Nor does the specification identify any specific drawback of existing RLVs that the alleged invention seeks to address.
The ‘321 patent instead attempts to lay claim over the technique described by Ishijima in 1998 of landing a reusable space launch vehicle on a “sea-going platform,” such as a “free-floating, ocean-going barge” or other vessel.
You can download the two appeals below:
https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2014-01376/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8678321/
https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2014-01378/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8678321/
31 responses to “SpaceX Files Appeals to Blue Origin’s Patent to Land Rockets on Barges”
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How can you patent this??? thats insane.
That what I thought!
Maybe I should quickly patent flying cars landing on earth…then just wait for the money to come rolling in. /s
IIRC that’s already been done.
Cheers.
the patenting or the money rolling in? 🙂
Paul Moller?
LOL.
I did not know about that one.
Pretty funny.
You can patent (almost) anything. Keeping and enforcing it is another story though.
Its still insane. Sigh.
… and ridiculous.
I´m thinking to ask for an application for patent for “device for refrigeration inside homes by means of apertures opened in the walls”. I want to call it “windows” but I think I can be in troubles with microsoft…;-P
Space X is facing a paradox of sorts. They reportedly do not patent any of their technologies or techniques and instead rely on trade secrets out of concern that they will be appropriated when exposed to the patent system. This is a two-edged sword because a company like Blue Origins can come along and patent an idea or technology even if it is similar to a technology or technique that Space X has used or developed. Therefore, Space X has rolled the proverbial dice by taking this approach and may have come up on the short end in this instance.
Yes, but when BO decides to patent it, then SpaceX can simply show that they developed this and destroy the patent. IOW, they make it prior art.
Of course, that very action announces to the world how important that patent really is.
How is a radio beacon a unique idea – it is bleeding obvious. The whole idea is bleeding obvious. It is certainly not an invention or innovation of any kind.
Obvious that it may be, Blue Origin decided to apply for a patent for its use on floating barge to used as a rocket platform.
Yes, the absurdity of this might be something that SpaceX has to deal with. However, here’s a thought. If SpaceX are not selling this for financial gain, especially if this is only for a test phase. What is to stop them using a floating platform to touchdown on?, on what basis could BO sue?.
And hence non-patentable. “Non-obvious” being a requirement for patents. (One too often ignored by the US Patent Office.)
Or is it obvious?
Guided, unmanned landings through beacons have been done before. Landings on sea platforms have been done before. Propulsive landings by rockets have been done before.
Sure, nobody has ever combined all of those but it is not like this is an actual product. Patenting “landing a rocket on a barge” is like patenting “riding a motorcycle on the moon”.
No matter what the law says about this, this is simply ridiculous. If this holds, nobody is allowed to land rockets on barges unless they pay BO? How does this stimulate competition? This is literally handing out a monopoly to a company that doesn’t even have the capability to do the thing they have a monopoly on.
If we allow actions to get patented… where does it end? I understand the need for patents for physical products. I have mixed feelings on software patents. But this… this isn’t even tangible. It is not a product. It is not something that can be sold.
I get where you are coming from when you look at it in context of the law, but I cannot see a single reason why allowing this could be a good idea.
The test for “obviousness” under 35 U.S.C. Section 103 is determined under what is called the “teaching, suggestion, or motivation” test (TSM test). Under this test, a patent claim can only be proved obvious if “some motivation or suggestion to combine the prior art teachings” can be found in the prior art, the nature of the problem, or the knowledge of a person having ordinary skill in the art.
So, it goes beyond what we subjectively consider “obvious”. This is the test that will be used to determine whether landing rockets on barges is “obvious” and thus non-patentable. Therefore, the Court will have to determine the scope and content of the prior art, i.e. the 321 patent; ascertain the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art, i.e. the use of a radio beacon; and resolve the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
It’s not just ‘look at quickly and make a decision’ folks. This is a time intensive analysis.
Although I am certainly bias in support of SpaceX Blue Origin applied for this patent in the 2009 – 2010 time period and they must have done a patent search prior to this. So unlike the Pad 39a patition trying to block SpaceX’s sole use of that infrastructure this was done long enough ago to not have been an intentional blockage to SpaceX’s plans.
After taking a very close look at this patent it appears to be navicable but definitely something of a thorn to easily get around for the intrim!
Patents are wide ranging from design too utility patents and this one is loosely held together in my opinion and this patent doesn’t hold any water!
The patent system today is business driven and has been legally corupt for the better part of a decade!
And as said here you can patent almost anything… Even a piece of Poop!
Most money made in patents today are made in litegation and infringements and not in the sales of awesome ideas!
It is a lawyer and court driven oligopoly!
In my opinion I wish that Blue Origin actually had something worthy of getting part of the CCiCAP award because if pitted against each other SpaceX and Blue Origins would drive space exploration technology like never seen before!
That would be the biggest bang for the Buck!
Landing on a barge or whatever downrange just doesn’t make any economic sense. Someone, most likely the paying customer, will have to pay for the booster to get returned to the launch site (if not directly, at least via chargeable overhead). As a temporary development exercise, maybe OK but in the long run, when revenue flights begin, don’t even think about it!.
it makes sense in some situations. for example, the center core on a cross-fed Falcon Heavy will almost certainly be unable to make a return flight to the launch site, and even for a Falcon 9, it does give you a bit of extra boost to orbit if you eliminate the burn back to the launch site.
yes, there will be costs associated with the logistics necessary to bring the stage back to the launch site with the barge, but i do not think this will be the enormous economic burden you are imagining.
Well, of course the trade would be the cost of the return actions vs. the reduced payload capability for the inflight return, as you imply.
if the options are between a return to the launch site to land or to land on a barge downrange, then yes, returning to the launch site is clearly a far more economical choice.
otherwise, no, the trade off is the cost of the return actions versus the cost of the loss of the stage.
i think it’s obvious that they won’t take the option of landing downrange on a barge if they have the fuel margin to return to the launch site.
a downrange barge does give them some options for their heavier payloads, though. it’s pretty easy to see how you could step through the options for payloads that are heavier or lighter.
lowest mass payloads
Falcon 9 – Return To Launch Site
Falcon 9 – Land Downrange
Falcon 9 – Expendable
Falcon Heavy – All 3 cores RTLS
Falcon Heavy – Side cores RTLS, center core LD
Falcon Heavy – All 3 cores LD
Falcon Heavy – Side cores LD, center stage Expendable
Falcon Heavy – Expendable
highest mass payloads
there’s some debate about whether or not a Falcon Heavy with all 3 cores RTLS would be used in place of a Falcon 9 Expendable.
Costs of running a barge are trivial compared to the cost of running a rocket. The cost of recovery is a rounding-off error in the cost of refurbishment and launch operations.
True, BUT also you have to consider the cost of transporting the stage(s) back to the launch site from somewhere downrange – and that involves sea travel and land travel plus the necessary systems to do all that.
Those were the costs I was talking about. Refurbishment and operating costs for the stages themselves will vastly outweigh the fuel and crew costs of a barge.
[SpaceX already ships its engines and cores overland from Hawthorne California to and from its test centre in Texas, and to the Cape in Florida.]
Let’s say refurbishment and reuse of F9 cuts the price by an order of magnitude, from ~$60m to ~$6m. If operating a barge costs more than 2% of that per recovery, I suspect Elon will invent his own damn barge. (Supersonic, electric hyper-barge. 🙂
I still think that the landing on a floating barge will not happen often.
There is a good reason why America builds super aircraft carriers.
It is NOT about holding more aircrafts, but being able to deal with larger waves.
A barge is pretty small in comparison to an aircraft carrier. As such, in 3 m swells, it will be next to impossible to land a rocket.
However, one weird idea thought it is not likely, would be to use one of our old aircraft carriers. The JFK was just retired. Technically, they could yank the nukes and clean it up and then use it as a landing spot. Its size would be fairly stable in 3m swells. It MIGHT be possible to even land on a 4m swell.
THough in the end, I still think that the best solution is to use an old oil platform. There are many that are abandoned. They CAN be moved.
Well, submarine ICBM launch is not an easy task either, yet they are being launched for decades in random weather conditions (russians even figured out how to do it from under the ice, see also Project Iceworm).
> However, one weird idea thought it is not likely, would be to use one of
our old aircraft carriers. The JFK was just retired. Technically, they
could yank the nukes and clean it up and then use it as a landing spot.
I’ve had no idea that US military offer decomissioned and demilitarized hardware for civilian use, is that the case?
First off, launching from underwater is much much easier than landing a rocket on a barge that is moving up and down 3-5 meters.
Secondly, look around. Do you see our hardware in parks? Stored at docks for museums? Yup.
Now, would an aircraft carriers that is 50-60 years old that has all of the military hardware remove be of any use to others? Nope. That is why in the past, UK and USA actually allowed these to go overseas to be decomissioned and scraped (that is now stopped; thank god). The JFK’s design is ancient and is not of much value to any designers. As such, there should be little issue with stripping it and then allowing SpaceX to use it LOCALLY.
Not sure that Musk will want to do that though.
I still think that spacex will not be landing on barges. I think that it will be old oil platforms that dot all over the coast, and are abandoned.
> First off, launching from underwater is much much easier than landing a rocket on a barge that is moving up and down 3-5 meters.
It probably is today, with modern control systems and simulation capabilities. It certainly wasn’t when SLBMs started to appear, I remember reading about how it was a major headache. But I see your point.
At TGV Rockets we discussed the potential of Landing and launching a small VTVL RLV off of a sea-going barge, and chatted this up at various functions.