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Bankrupt LightSquared on Friday sued leaders in the GPS industry, including Deere & Co. and Garmin International Inc., saying that they kept silent about interference concerns stemming from LightSquared's wireless network until the company had already pumped $4 billion into building it, Reuters reported on Friday. In a lawsuit filed in bankruptcy court, where LightSquared is fighting to keep control of its spectrum, the company alleged that farm equipment maker Deere, and GPS companies Garmin and Trimble Navigation Ltd. led it to believe its network would not interfere with global positioning system devices. The complaint comes on the heels of a similar lawsuit against the GPS industry by Phil Falcone's Harbinger Capital, LightSquared's controlling shareholder. Last month, LightSquared received permission from the bankruptcy judge overseeing its chapter 11 case to pause the Harbinger lawsuit so that LightSquared could decide whether it wanted to join the suit or bring claims of its own.

Charlie Ergen's Dish Network Corp won dismissal yesterday of a lawsuit brought by Phil Falcone's Harbinger Capital Partners in a fight over LightSquared Inc, a wireless communications business that is in bankruptcy, Reuters reported yesterday. Harbinger had sought $4 billion from Dish in the lawsuit, alleging that Dish had tried to strip Falcone of ownership of LightSquared. The legal team for Ergen had called the lawsuit a transparent bid by Falcone to hold onto LightSquared after driving it into bankruptcy. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman ruled from the bench after a hearing yesterday and dismissed the claims against Dish, attorneys on both sides said afterward.

LightSquared lost $55.5 million in September, bringing the wireless satellite company's losses since filing for bankruptcy to more than $934 million, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. In a Wednesday filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, LightSquared again attributed a bulk of its losses to interest expenses on its debt. In September, the company paid $33.5 million in interest expenses and now has put $535.3 million toward interest since its chapter 11 filing in May 2012. The bulk of the interest payments have gone to the owners of $1.7 billion in bank debt owned by a group of hedge funds and an entity controlled by Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen, but Dish's $2.2 billion bid for LightSquared's wireless spectrum assets would pay off that debt. Despite the Dish bid, LightSquared, which is controlled by Philip Falcone and his Harbinger Capital Partners hedge-fund firm, is seeking a competing bid for the assets at an auction set for late next month.

As LightSquared and its various suitors prepare to meet in court today over their competing plans to bring the company out of bankruptcy, the wireless venture said that it was unable to strike a compromise with Charlie Ergen's Dish Network Corp. on the parameters of a sale, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. LightSquared is set to ask Bankruptcy Judge Shelley C. Chapman to sign off on its plan to sell the company's assets under one restructuring proposal, but parties bidding on those assets disagree. Dish, which is bidding $2.2 billion for a chunk of LightSquared's wireless spectrum, wants a separate plan for that sale. LightSquared said in court papers that it tried to come to a compromise with Dish and a third group bidding on a smaller piece of the wireless-satellite company's spectrum, to "avoid waste of estate resources, duplication of effort" and market confusion. "Unfortunately, to date, LightSquared has been unsuccessful in its efforts," the company said.

Cerberus Capital Management is seeking a confidentiality agreement that would allow it to examine the books and internal operations of BlackBerry, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. It was not clear whether the move would ultimately lead to a bid for BlackBerry, which reported a $1 billion quarterly loss last week largely because its new line of smartphones flopped. The company has already agreed to a preliminary and conditional offer from its largest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto. While it remains free to look for a better offer, BlackBerry would have to pay Fairfax $157 million if it accepts another bid before Nov. 4. Fairfax can walk away without penalty.

Cloud storage company Nirvanix Inc. on Tuesday filed for chapter 11 protection, the culmination of a startling flop for what was once seen as a high-flier among cloud startups, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The filing comes on the heels of a notice the company posted on its website last week saying that it was working with International Business Machines Corp. to either return customers’ data or help them move it to another cloud storage provider and would try to be available through October 15. Nirvanix had raised more than $70 million in venture capital since its founding in 2007, according to VentureWire records. In May 2012 after the last funding round, which was $25 million, former Chief Executive Scott Genereux told VentureWire that Nirvanix was growing and headed toward profitability and a possible IPO. Its largest equity holders are Khosla Ventures and TriplePoint Capital, which may provide debtor-in-possession financing to keep the company running, according to the bankruptcy filing. The company reported assets of between $10 million and $50 million and liabilities in that same range, according to the filing.

LightSquared Inc., Philip Falcone’s bankrupt wireless spectrum company, resolved a dispute with lenders on bidding procedures that the company had said could have foiled a $2 billion offer for its assets, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The auction procedures will be submitted for formal court approval, Matthew S. Barr, an attorney for LightSquared, told Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman yesterday. Under the agreement, an independent committee will oversee the auction. The lenders, who hold $1.4 billion of $1.7 billion in debt of LightSquared’s LP unit, had objected to a plan that it said would have given Falcone’s investment company, Harbinger Capital Partners LLC, too much power to choose the winning bid. The group said Harbinger opposed any sale of LightSquared assets.

Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman blocked a proposed appointee to a committee to oversee the bankruptcy auction of broadband company LightSquared LP, citing a conflict of interests, and admonished the company for making the nomination, Reuters reported yesterday. Donna Alderman cannot be part of the committee because she could be seen as having a bias against satellite television company Dish Network Corp., which is seeking to acquire LightSquared's spectrum, Judge Chapman said. Alderman, a former director at satellite operator DBSD, lost her job when Dish acquired DBSD in 2011, then unsuccessfully sought $7 million from Dish for her role in generating value for DBSD's estate. She ended up with $750,000 in severance.

While BlackBerry has found a buyer through the the $4.7 billion offer by Fairfax Financial Holdings, the action to take the company private does not necessarily resolve the smartphone maker’s problems, according to commentary by Prof. Stephen Lubben in yesterday's New York Times DealBook blog. There is no guarantee that Fairfax will close the deal, according to Lubben, and while its letter of intent includes a go-shop provision, it is unclear whether a rival suitor will surface. BlackBerry announced on Friday that it expected to report a quarterly loss of nearly $1 billion and planned to lay off about 4,500 people, or 40 percent of its workforce. The challenge BlackBerry faces is reducing its operations as its customer base shrinks. Companies that fail to adjust to current reality can quickly find themselves insolvent as they try to pay for the infrastructure of an older, grander operation with the revenue of a newly smaller business. The only way BlackBerry can avoid bankruptcy, according to Lubben, is to shrink its costs along with its size.

Lenders to hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone's LightSquared Inc. yesterday questioned the selection of an independent LightSquared director to help oversee a sale of the wireless telecommunications firm, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The lenders in bankruptcy court papers claim that the director, Donna Alderman, isn't independent because she previously sparred with Dish Network Corp., the company currently offering $2.22 billion for LightSquared. A bankruptcy judge is set to hold a hearing today to review rules governing LightSquared's expected auction later this year.