If something has no owner, anyone can be the first to claim it. It is a well-known principle that lawyers formulate as "first among equal." Pioneers of the Wild West used it to claim land ownership.
For example, according to terrestrial law, American Denis Hope owns all the astronomic bodies in the solar system except for the Earth and the Sun. To assert his ownership, he sent notices of his territorial claims to the UN, the Soviet Union, the US, China, Canada and other countries in 1980. There was no response. Since then he has sold plots on the Moon to over two million people.
Unlike Hope, Osipov "does not intend to sell clouds."
He want to register an international environmental organization, "A Drop of Life-Giving Water" that will ensure that the rights of clouds' owner and all humankind for healthy life are abided by. Under his plan, if pollution of the atmosphere and, consequently, clouds is registered anywhere in the world, he, as the owner of the "damaged" clouds, will go to court and demand compensation for the damage inflicted not on someone in general, but on him in person.
"I do not think it is possible to buy clouds," says Andrei Knyazev, a lawyer at Moscow's Knyazev and Partners. "Everything is already regulated by air legislation. Besides, property can be sold or at least touched, and you cannot do that with clouds."
Experts, however, maintain that clouds are material.
