Recent reports suggest that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) used a Chinese-built reconnaissance satellite to target United States military installations (TEE-01B incident). On its face, this is a story about geopolitics. On closer inspection, it is also a story about intellectual property. Modern satellites are dense bundles of IP—patented hardware, copyrighted software and imagery, trade-secret analytics, and layered contractual licences. The moment such a platform is diverted from civilian to military use, every layer of that IP architecture is implicated and may have far reaching consequences.
We examine the potential IP implications of use of commercial satellite, remote sensing, and imagery technology, using the TEE-01B incident as a focal point. The argument is structural: IP law is built for private dealings between commercial parties and strains visibly when one party is a sovereign state pursuing military objectives in orbit.
In April 2026, the Financial Times and Reuters reported that the IRGC secretly acquired a Chinese-built spy satellite, TEE-01B, in late 2024 and used it to target US military bases during the March 2026 phase of the US–Iran conflict. The satellite was built by Earth Eye Co., a Chinese commercial manufacturer, and launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Control was transferred to Iran through a novel "in-orbit delivery" model under a contract, covering the satellite, launch services, mission software, and long-term operational support. Ground-segment services were provided by a Beijing-based company with documented ties to China's People's Liberation Army, which supplied mission-planning software and a global ground-station network.
The satellite's sub-meter imaging was a dramatic leap over Iran's domestic capabilities, and reports suggested that it was tasked to monitor U.S. installations in various middle eastern countries. The episode is not isolated and similar incidents have been reported in the past as well. TEE-01B fits a broader pattern in which nominally commercial space assets have served as conduits for military intelligence.
A satellite embodies at least four layers of IP, each governed by its own regime and each implicated when the platform is misused.
The hardware layer attracts patents: electro-optical sensors, focal-plane arrays, propulsion subsystems, phased-array antennas, and attitude-control mechanisms are routinely patented. The software layer—mission-planning code, command-and-control systems, and image-processing pipelines—is protected by copyright, with trade-secret protection for non-public proprietary or confidential information. The data layer—imagery and derived geospatial products—is protected by copyright where it meets the originality threshold, and by trade-secret law where it embeds proprietary analytics. The contractual layer sits on top: the licence that defines who may operate the platform, for what purposes, in what territories, and subject to what end-use restrictions.
In TEE-01B, the in-orbit delivery model blurs the line between a sale of goods, a technology licence, and a service agreement. The Financial Times report suggests a long-term services-and-licence arrangement—mission software, telemetry handling, and ground-segment services bundled together—rather than an outright sale. Whether the IRGC's diversion of the platform from civilian to military targeting falls outside the scope of any underlying licence is, on its face, a question of contract and IP law.
The imagery layer deserves separate attention because it is the IP product most often commercialised in routine satellite transactions, and the layer most directly implicated when imagery is used for targeting. In most jurisdictions, processed or enhanced satellite imagery is treated as a copyrightable work, while raw sensor data may fail the originality threshold or be subject to open-access obligations. Unprocessed frames may struggle to qualify, but curated, enhanced, or analytically processed imagery generally will. Many jurisdictions reach a similar result through a "modicum of creativity" standard, and mission-planning and image-processing software is independently protectable as a literary work.
In TEE-01B, the imagery reportedly used to monitor U.S. installations before and after Iranian strikes is itself a copyright-protected work, presumptively owned by Earth Eye Co. or its licensee. Its use for military targeting raises the same enforcement difficulties as the underlying platform IP, with one added wrinkle: imagery is rarely sold. It is licensed, almost always with strict end-use limitations.
End-use restrictions in technology licences are well-established and enforceable. In Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld licence terms that restricted otherwise permissible uses, including reverse engineering, holding that contract may permissibly supplement the IP regime. Most commercial satellite imagery licences and platform-access agreements prohibit military or intelligence use, prohibit onward transfer, and reserve audit and termination rights to the licensor.
If Earth Eye Co.'s arrangements with the IRGC contain such restrictions, or if any upstream third-country IP within the platform is subject to civilian-use covenants, the diversion to military targeting is a breach of licence that may co-exist with copyright or trade-secret violations. The doctrinal answer is clear; the practical answer is not. Contract law, like IP law, depends on a willing defendant and a neutral forum, neither of which exists when the licensee is a sovereign military arm.
The most commercially valuable layer of modern satellite intelligence is increasingly not the imagery itself but the analytics applied to it: AI-based object detection, automated target recognition, and predictive geospatial models. These may be patented but may also be kept as trade secrets because secrecy itself is a competitive moat. TRIPS under Article 39 obliges WTO Members to protect commercially valuable secret information against use "in a manner contrary to honest commercial practices". Once the platform, mission software, and analytics pipeline pass into the hands of a state user, the practical capacity to police that obligation collapses. The diversion of TEE-01B from its stated civilian uses—“agriculture, ocean monitoring, emergency management, natural resource supervision, and municipal transportation”—to military intelligence is a textbook illustration.
The natural state response to incidents like TEE-01B is not to sue, but to designate. For example, the 2023 placement of Changguang Satellite Technology on the U.S. Entity List, after it supplied imagery to the Wagner Group and Houthi forces, foreclosed that company's ability to commercialise its IP in the U.S. market—regardless of whether its underlying technology was independently developed and lawfully patented. Where infringement actions cannot reach a sovereign-aligned actor, sanctions deprive that actor of the commercial market in which its IP would otherwise generate value. Sanctions, in effect, are IP enforcement by other means.
IP enforcement in space technology faces overlapping jurisdictional problems. Satellites orbit outside national territory, and satellite data is inherently transnational—often captured in one jurisdiction, processed in a second, and used in a third.
The TEE-01B episode exposes a deeper limit that cuts across each of the issues above. IP law is built for private ordering between commercial actors. Whether the cause of action is patent infringement on the platform, copyright infringement in the imagery, breach of licence, or trade-secret misappropriation in the analytics, enforcement depends on three preconditions: a court with jurisdiction over the defendant, a defendant amenable to that jurisdiction, and a forum capable of granting effective relief. Where sovereign or quasi-sovereign actors operate in orbit, each of these tends to collapse. The Outer Space Treaty addresses sovereignty and peaceful use but is essentially silent on IP. The TRIPS Agreement, the Paris Convention, and the PCT supply a vocabulary for ownership and protection but were never intended to constrain conduct by or on behalf of a state.
The IP issues raised by Iran's use of the satellite are not unfamiliar. They are the same issues that arise in any commercial satellite transaction. What is unfamiliar is the context: a sovereign military user, an in-orbit transfer that bypasses physical borders, and a regulatory environment in which national security routinely trumps private rights.
The lesson for IP practitioners is twofold. First, the commercial satellite sector demands unusually careful contractual architecture—end-use restrictions, audit rights, geofencing, and sanctions-triggered termination should be standard rather than exceptional. Second, the most consequential battles over space IP will not be fought in courtrooms. They will be fought in entity-list designations, export-control rulings, remote-sensing licensing decisions, and international standard-setting fora. TEE-01B will not be the last incident of its kind, and the IP community should engage with it as a serious doctrinal problem, not merely a geopolitical curiosity.
About the authors: JV Abhay is a Partner and Aishwarya Chaturvedi is an Associate at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.