New LightSquared Settles GPS Lawsuit With Garmin
December 17 2015 - 10:30AM
Dow Jones News
LightSquared and Garmin Ltd. Thursday settled their long-running
legal fight over whether the wireless venture's Global Positioning
System network interfered with receivers made by the Swiss
company.
The new LightSquared, which emerged from bankruptcy last week
after three and half years under court protection, says the
settlement with Garmin sets the parameters on how the GPS and
broadband industries can divvy up the spectrum, the limited pockets
of airwaves that mobile-phone and Internet companies use.
The Garmin settlement, which comes on the heels of
LightSquared's settlement last week with Deere & Co. and
Trimble Navigation Ltd., marks the end of a number of disputes
between LightSquared and GPS equipment makers over the use of
spectrum for ground-based wireless broadband services.
LightSquared has been busy making peace with GPS equipment
makers in a bid to show the company's broadband wireless network
can coexist with GPS technology.
In 2013, Phil Falcone's Harbinger Capital, the hedge fund that
then controlled LightSquared, sued Garmin and two other GPS device
makers—Deere & Co. and Trimble Navigation Ltd.—along with
industry groups in federal court claiming their equipment
interfered with the LightSquared network.
LightSquared filed for chapter 11 protection in May 2012,
shortly after federal regulators refused to clear LightSquared's
plans to launch its wireless network. Those regulators were warned
by the GPS industry that LightSquared's network could interfere
with GPS.
Fortress Investment Group LLC, Centerbridge Partners and J.P.
Morgan & Chase Co. now share ownership in the reorganized
company. Mr. Falcone maintained a 44% stake in the company but no
longer has a say in the wireless venture's operations.
Write to Patrick Fitzgerald at patrick.fitzgerald@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 17, 2015 10:15 ET (15:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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