Selected legal aspects of commercial remote-sensing: Bilateral regulations and proprietary provisions relative to Landsat, SPOT, MOS-1, ERS-1 and RADARSAT

This thesis analyses several contracts which regulate the relationship between organizations which own or operate remote-sensing satellites and the organizations which receive satellite transmitted data.;The second part deals with the study of the contracts. Those which are commercially oriented are very elaborated in order to create a team spirit with the local organization. It starts with a study of the evolution of the Landsat contracts when this satellite was alone of its kind in the Western world. Then it studies the impact on the contracts of the early commercialization process and compares the new contracts with those established by newly arrived and competing organizations in the market. Finally, it studies similar provisions set by the European system and by the Canadian system.;The third part focuses on the impact of the copyright conventions on remote-sensing data protection. It shows that even though this protection is expressed by means of various warnings and "ad-hoc" clauses, this protection is still mostly formal. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).;The first part is a descriptive part which stresses the importance of the national environment.