New LightSquared Settles GPS Lawsuit With Garmin

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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 17, 2015 10:15 ET (15:15 GMT)

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