Small fragments of minerals and rocks obtained during the Luna 16, Luna 20 and Luna 24 missions were taken over by the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences from the Soviet side in the 1970s for scientific research. But after a few decades, the sample appeared in the possession of the daughter of a scientist who worked with the material years ago.
The woman claimed that her mother got the dust from the Soviet side and the family kept it as their own property. The Academy of Sciences, on the other hand, objected that it was the property of the scientific institution from the beginning and that the mother only took over the defendant’s samples and used them as part of her work. And so, in the end, there was a lawsuit, which was definitively closed by the Supreme Court these days, with the fact that the sample belongs to the academy.
“On the basis of archival documents, witness statements and other evidence, all the courts came to the conclusion that the samples were always handed over to the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, not to specific individuals. They also considered the fact that it was an extremely rare material that was intended for scientific research and whose donation to a private person would be quite exceptional,” described Supreme Court spokeswoman Gabriela Tomíčková.
“The decision closes an extraordinary dispute over one of the rarest scientific materials found in the Czech Republic. At the same time, it confirms that scientific artifacts acquired for research institutions cannot be considered private property simply because they were entrusted to a specific researcher,” the spokeswoman added.
