Law Commons^™

Bringing Space Law Into The Commercial World: Property Rights Without Sovereignty, Henry R. Hertzfeld, Frans Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

International agreements declare that no government can claim outer space or celestial bodies in outer space as its own. Private firms seeking to invest in potential space enterprises frequently point to these provisions as a major barrier to the future commercial development of space. Such businesses contend that the absence of property rights prevent them from obtaining external financing, hinder the protection of their investments in space, and deprive them of the assurance that they can appropriate income from their investment. In short, the lack of sovereignty in space jeopardizes the ability to make profits from private investment.

This article …

Intellectual Property Rights As Revenue-Generation For Galileo: To Own Or Not To Own, That Is The Question, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

One of the major issues surrounding the future Galileo concerns intellectual property rights and their potential for revenue-generation to the benefit of the future private concessionaire. This article investigates some of the key aspects concerned, with a view also to downstream value-added service providers using Galileo signals and services.

Big Brother Or Eye In The Sky? Legal Aspects Of Space-Based Geo-Lnformation For Disaster Management, Frans Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

Amongst the methods of gathering geo-information inter alia for disaster management purposes, the use of satellites is a particularly interesting one in view of their global coverage. In this area a number of recent interesting developments have taken place, such as the establishment of a Charter on Space and Major Disasters, and the rapidly evolving plans for GMES and GEOSS. These developments raise a number of legal issues, related to state responsibility, state liability, and the respective roles of intergovernmental organizations and commercial and/or private entities in this regard. These issues cannot be easily solved, since the international legal environment …

Current And Future Development Of National Space Law And Policy, Frans Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

In a highly political, highly visible area of society such as that of space activities, 'law' and 'policy' are not always clearly distinguishable - and more often that not, the ties between the two are very short and very direct. If a distinction would need to be made, certainly to the public eye 'policy' would focus more on the day-to-day handling of affairs with 'flexibility' as the key concept, whereas 'law' would be - focusing more on long-range stability, with inherent 'inflexibility' almost inevitably following from that. Whatever the value of such evaluation, essentially the ties between the two are …

The Sky Is The Limit--But Where Does It End?, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

The discussion on the delimitation, and hence definition of 'outer space' as an area, and subsidiary to that on the need or desirability to have such a delimitation and definition, harks back to the beginning of the space age. Until then, it had been quite clear that every state exercised full sovereignty over the sky above its territory and territorial waters, whilst no one felt the need for finding out how high upward such sovereignty would exactly extend. With Sputnik, for the first time the practical question arose however whether there indeed was an upper limit to airspace, and if …

Review Of Aerospace Marketing Management, By Philippe Malaval And Christophe Bénaroya, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

From time to time, especially among space lawyers, discussion flares up on the wisdom of treating air law and space law as similar branches of law, and on the justification for teaching and doing research on both at the same venues and in the same contexts. Whatever the merits of keeping a keen eye on the particularities of the two legal fields, however, one should never loose sight of the fact that space law is intricately linked to issues not only of space policy, but also of economics and technology, and that the worlds of aviation and the space industry …