Dutch navigation rival TomTom announced today a confidential global settlement of all of its intellectual property litigation with Garmin. The settlement resolves all of the pending intellectual property litigation including cases in the UK, Netherlands, Wisconsin, and Texas. The parties did not disclose details of their agreement.
Garmin is in a bidding ware for Tele Atlas, which is also being pursued by rival TomTom. TomTom first offered 1.8 billion euros for Tele Atlas in July, seeking to control one of just two global digital map makers and reduce its dependence on selling hardware.
In October, Nokia said it would buy the other global digital map maker, Navteq.
Nokia aims to produce better maps for pedestrians with its $8.1 billion acquisition of Navteq, leaving the car-navigation market largely to others. “It’s not really our intention to take market share away. It’s our intention to grow the market,” Michael Halbherr, the head of Nokia’s location-based activities, said on Thursday. “Mapping will go to the next level. That’s one of the things where communities can help,” Halbherr said. “We have the world’s biggest media-capture device. It means people can capture content, put it on the map and share it with others.”
UPDATE: Garmin has withdrawn their $3.3 billion takeover bid for Tele Atlas, clearing the way for rival bidder TomTom that offered to acquire the Dutch digital mapping company for $4.25 billion. Separately, Garmin said it struck a deal with Navteq, the only other digital mapmaker other than Tele Atlas to have global operations, guaranteeing it access to Navteq maps through 2015.
Tele Atlas and its chief rival Navteq have essentially a duopoly in mapping data. ABI Research says annual sales of GPS-enabled devices will climb from $15 billion annually to $22 billion by 2008.
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