LunaTrex name now defunct

Court orders team members to cease using logo

By Aleasha Sandley, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer

INDIANAPOLIS — A federal judge ordered that members of a team competing to send a rover to the moon could not use the group’s originally trademarked name, LunaTrex.

Use of the LunaTrex name and logo was at issue since members of the group, which was competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, had a “falling out” in June, according to a court opinion written by Circuit Judge David F. Hamilton.

The plaintiff in the case was Anderson businessman Pete Bitar and his company, Air Buoyant LLC, who filed an injunction against defendant Mary Cafasso in an attempt to keep her from using the LunaTrex name and logo.

Subsequently, Cafasso filed an injuction herself, to keep Bitar from using the same trademarked intellectual property. According to Hamilton’s order, neither party can use the trademarks after his Dec. 1 decision.

In the meantime, the X Prize Foundation has suspended Bitar, Cafasso and other members of the former LunaTrex team from participating in the $20 million competition until the dispute is resolved. Bitar said he planned to continue his quest for the X Prize.

“We’re going to go forward under a different name and a different banner,” he said. “We’re going to continue forward. It’s certainly put a bump in the road.”

Cafasso’s attorney, Charles Novins, contacted The Herald Bulletin after it ran a September article that referred to Bitar as the group’s leader.

“He’s a guy that has no association with LunaTrex,” Novins said. “Pete sort of split off with his company.”

According to court documents, the group formerly known as LunaTrex began when Cafasso met aerospace experts Joseph Gangestad and Margaret Ratcliff at a conference in New Mexico in October 2007 that discussed the recently announced Lunar X Prize, according to court documents. Ratcliff and Bitar then discussed forming a team to compete for the prize, and Bitar contacted the foundation in December 2007 to announce he intended to form a team. Bitar sent an e-mail to Cafasso in January 2008 inviting her to join the team and paid for her travel to Indiana for a team member meeting, according to the court’s opinion.

At that meeting, according to court documents,the group chose the name LunaTrex, and Bitar established the Web site lunatrex.com at his own expense. The group also sent a registration packet to the X Prize Foundation, and Bitar paid the $10,000 registration fee.

“The entire team contributed to the creation of the mark’s value and protected status,” the opinion says. “Typically, when a partnership breaks up, the assets are distributed among the partners. A trademark, however, is not divisible. If it were shared among the different splintered parties, the resulting confusion would destroy the value that each partner worked so hard to create.”

The court found that, although the LunaTrex name and logo had not been officially trademarked until June 2009, when both Bitar and, a few days later, Cafasso had tried to trademark them, the items had actually come under trademark protection in 2008 when the team started using them in commercial activities.

Bitar quickly became the financial backer of the group, paying for travel and Web site expenses for the other team members. According to court documents, Cafasso testified that she committed to working 30 hours a week on LunaTrex business with the understanding that Bitar would pay her a salary when the money became available. All other group members worked on a volunteer basis.

“They never actually agreed on an amount or a time or on the conditions that would trigger an obligation for Bitar to pay Cafasso,” the document says.

The money to pay Cafasso never came in, as Bitar’s company, Air Buoyant, did not win the government defense contracts Bitar had hoped it would, according to the document.

“I started questioning where is the money,” Cafasso said. “I can’t sit here and play games. I have 25 years of experience, reputation and credibility with these people (involved in the project).”

Meanwhile, Cafasso had taken on the role of technical team leader with her experience in orbital operations and mission control with NASA and companies that operate communication satellites.

“Obviously, Pete has no background in the aerospace industry,” she said in an earlier interview with The Herald Bulletin concerning Bitar. “He asked if I would technically lead the group. He told me that the group could not go forward without my participation.”

Bitar said Cafasso did not ask for money for her work until after Bitar had worked out a preliminary sponsorship deal worth nearly $1 million. Court documents identified the potential sponsor as Stihl Corporation.

“My opinion is that she was desperate for money to solve her other obligations,” he said, referring to a separate judgement against Cafasso that Bitar said required her to pay $300,000, the same amount she asked of Bitar. “Everything was fine until she learned that we had a sponsor on the way. At that point and thereafter, she became very adversarial and demanding of payment for her services when nobody else on the team did.”

On Nov. 4, a summary judgment was granted to General Dynamics C4 Systems Inc., Cafasso’s former employer, in which the court found that Cafasso was in breach of contract for disclosing confidential information without authorization, removing copies of the company’s documents and data from its premises and not delivering all such materials in her possession when asked.

Cafasso could not be reached Friday evening for comment on that litigation.

The group’s division came to a head at a June meeting when Bitar and Cafasso both took independent steps to secure control of the LunaTrex name and team, according to the court document. At the meeting, both asserted their own roles as team leader, and Bitar offered to step down from the team if the team would reimburse him the money he had spent.

“That whole meeting concluded with Pete threatening the team,” Cafasso said in an earlier interview. “He threatened to withdraw the application fee to X Prize and go off and create his own team. His resignation was accepted, and that was the resolution of the meeting.”

The court, however, found that there was no resolution to the meeting and that Bitar had not simply walked away from the team.

“In the court’s view, it is unlikely that Bitar simply resigned unconditionally from the team that he had done so much to promote,” the opinion says. “It is also unlikely that he merely abandoned his investment of money and time to others who did not appreciate his contributions ... the court finds that there was no clear resignation by Bitar and certainly there was no clear resolution of ownership of the team’s trademark, its registration and fee with the Lunar X Prize competition and other intellectual property.”

The division among LunaTrex’s original team members has caused Stihl to suspend its discussions with the team on possible sponsorship until the dispute is resolved. Additionally, if the argument is not settled by Dec. 31, LunaTrex will be removed from the X Prize competition.

X Prize Foundation officials did not return a message seeking comment on the matter. The court document indicated the foundation would not make a public statement on LunaTrex’s standing.

Bitar said he was hopeful to get the team going again, under a different name, and secure the original sponsorship. Out of 13 people on the original LunaTrex team, Bitar said 11 have remained on his team and one, Gangestad, had quit both sides.

The team has not picked a new name for the competition yet, Bitar said.

“We’re going to go forward, and it’s going to be a different name, but it’s probably all for the better anyway,” he said. “It’s done permanent damage to the name LunaTrex. Hopefully I can get the sponsorship back.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on actually, and it’s very exciting, notwithstanding this mess and all the legal damage. It’s still a very viable mission.”

Contact Aleasha Sandley: 640-4805, aleasha.sandley@heraldbulletin.com.

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