Re: Could the IAU *officially* assign star names for a fee?

From: Chris L Peterson (clp_at_alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: 03/13/05 

Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 16:45:13 GMT

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 16:00:25 GMT, Aidan Karley
<aidan@mynameplus1.demon.co.uk.invalid> wrote:

>In article <5c4631dbkg8bieh62kbt8rh978uq3ieis8@4ax.com>, Chris L
>Peterson wrote:
>> (And a word of warning- ISR has sued others for interfering with their
>> business, so you might want to reserve a good legal budget. Harassment
>> suits can be expensive, and these days ISR might even be granted a
>> business practices patent on what they do!)
>>
> Then don't do it in the States...

What ISR has done (in the U.S.) is to threaten lawsuits with sufficient
vigor that several universities have asked faculty members with pages
describing the practice of "buying" stars to remove those pages. So
legal threat has been used to drive censorship- something not at all
uncommon in the U.S.

The point of using a lawsuit (or threat of one) this way is to force the
other guy to spend legal dollars. If you do that early enough, you may
eliminate you competition before it really becomes a problem. Given
ISR's past history, I would not put it past using such a tactic. Even a
small chance of legal headaches is probably enough to discourage many
startups... or the IAU.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

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