Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Blue Origin have been competing in the commercial rocket industry for over a decade, with each focusing on developing reuseable Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicles. As Elon Musk of Tesla Automotive fame and Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, continue to battle it out for government contracts, the world of patent inter partes review has become the new arena. In March of this year, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Blue Origin a patent on the sea landing of space launch vehicles. The innovation in question was the ability to have the booster stage separate, reignite, and perform a powered landing on a sea-going platform. The problem? SpaceX argues there is nothing new in this patent, especially given a particular paper written by three Japanese scientists published in 1998.

It is now up to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to make the decision as to patentability, and the consequences are significant. SpaceX is clearly winning the commercial space race, having been awarded a $2.6 billion multilaunch Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract from NASA in September. Although the current launch systems use the non-VTVL Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has already demonstrated its Grasshopper VTVL system and acknowledged the end goal is to have fully-reuseable boosters for its launches. A patent on VTVL vehicle landings in the ocean could be a significant obstacle for SpaceX—especially if the patent is held by Blue Origin.

Sources: http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/42007spacex-bringing-the-right-stuff-to-patent-slog-with-blue-origin-expert-says https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR201401376/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8678321/ http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.1998-4120

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