A federal judge has ruled that operating a drone for commercial purposes is within the bounds of the law, TechCrunch reported.
According to National Transportation Safety Board Administrative Law Judge Patrick Geraghty, the Federal Aviation Administration or FAA has not yet issued any rules that were legally binding banning the practice. Moreover, the ruling said that policy notices that the regulator used to serve as grounds for the barring of the drones could not be enforced since there were not made through the process of rulemaking, Politico reported.
The decision came after the FAA fined $10,000 to a drone operator after using a drone to film a University of Virginia commercial. This was the first fine that the FAA, which said that commercial drones were not legal, fined an operator. However, the drone operator took the case to court to fight the penalty. The operator contended that official regulation about drones, like the one they used, still needed to be made. This was sided by the judge even if the FAA alleged that the operator was not a hobbyist and exhibited carelessness and recklessness when using the drone, TechCrunch reported.
According to the Politico report, the $10,000 fine that the FAA levied on Swiss drone operator Raphael Pirker was extinguished with the ruling.
TechCrunch quoted the judge's decision which said that the FAA "has not issued an enforceable Federal Acquisition Regulation regulatory rule governing model aircraft operation; has historically exempted model aircraft from the statutory FAR definitions of 'aircraft' by relegating model aircraft operations to voluntary compliance with the guidance expressed in [the 2007 policy notice], Respondent's model aircraft operation was not subject to FAR regulation and enforcement."
Congress has tasked the FAA to come up with official rules to govern how commercial drones are used. It has given it until December 2015 to come up with the policies, the report said.
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