ICO Wins Court Battle with Boeing

A LA Court jury awarded ICO Global Communications $236 million in punitive damages in its case against Boeing. This award is in addition to the at least $371 million awarded last week when the jury found Boeing liable for fraud, tortious interference, and breach of contract. In addition, the Court will determine the amount of pre-judgment interest to be added to the award, which ICO expects to be approximately $100 million. The total expected judgment to be entered against Boeing in favor of ICO is approximately $707 million.

“We appreciate the sacrifices made by the jury in performing their civic duty over this lengthy trial,” commented J. Timothy Bryan, chief executive officer for ICO. “ICO’s attention now turns to collecting all of the damages awarded, including all of the substantial post judgment interest which will accrue to ICO from the date of the judgment should Boeing pursue an appeal.”

In case you are unfamiliar with the company, ICO developed and launched the G1 satellite, which is intended to serve as the platform for the “ICO mim” (mobile interactive media) service. This service is planned to include live mobile television, interactive navigation and emergency communications capabilities, and will serve the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Alpha trials of this service will begin in 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The company is working with Alcatel-Lucent and Hughes Communications on its alpha trials, and has an agreement with Delphi Corporation to develop its mobile video service for the North American automotive market. NBC Universal and Discovery Networks are providing live mobile video content for the trials.

The past two weeks have had both good and bad news for Boeing collectively.  As we reported at the beginning of the week, the machinist union strike ended this past Sunday, November 2nd.