The long-standing battle between California-based telescope juggernauts Meade and Celestron is about to expand beyond the showroom and into the courts. Within hours of receiving a patent for technology used in its breakthrough, low-cost ETX telescopes, Meade Instruments filed suit in U.S. District Court against rival Celestron International and its parent company Tasco Sales.

Meade alleges that its competitors copied "distributed-intelligence" technology that Meade developed in bringing automatic Go To pointing to low-cost telescopes. By distributing the programming and telescope control among several low-cost components, Meade engineers dramatically reduced the cost of automated telescopes compared with earlier models that consolidated this work in a costly central processor. Go To telescopes are revolutionizing public access to the cosmos by allowing people to take a push-button tour of the heavens with minimal prior knowledge of the night sky.

Before Meade introduced its computerized ETX line in January 1999, telescopes featuring automatic pointing cost several thousand dollars and were purchased primarily by advanced amateur astronomers and institutions. Small ETX refractors are now available for under $300 and are sold in many department and camera stores. Celestron introduced its competing NexStar line of low-cost computerized telescopes in July 1999.

Reached in Japan during a business trip, Meade Chairman and CEO John Diebel told Sky & Telescope that the lawsuit seeks damages of approximately $45 million and asks that Celestron and Tasco stop selling Go To telescopes that directly infringe on Meade's patent. "We hate resorting to litigation," Diebel says, "but we have repeatedly warned Celestron since August 1999 that it is stepping on our intellectual property." Diebel further notes that such lawsuits typically take several years to resolve and that unless Meade seeks, and is granted, a preliminary injunction against its competitors, all parties will likely continue to make and sell Go To telescopes.

Celestron Senior Vice President Joe Lupica says that his company is going to aggressively fight the lawsuit. When asked how this might affect the telescope market, Lupica answered, "the consumer has to lose in the short term, since dollars and resources will be spent on the [law]suit instead of improving products."

Asked the same question, Diebel spun his answer around. "We spent a couple of million dollars and thousands of man-hours developing the technology behind low-cost Go To telescopes. We certainly feel the consumer has benefited greatly from this technology. Where is our incentive to continue putting money and time into research and development of new and better products if we can't protect our intellectual property? We're going to be spending more than $2 million this year on R&D, and we owe it to shareholders and consumers to protect this investment."