Company: NXNVW
Filing Date: 2025-03-12
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001213900-25-023287
Chunk: 285

Company: NEXTNAV INC.
Filing Date: 2025-03-12
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 285
---

cases requiring terrestrial signal strength, their signals are not as strong as
those from terrestrial-based systems. LEO systems are subject to similar
physical vulnerabilities as GPS.    

●
Commercial Location Systems, including legacy cellular systems, crowd-sourced systems and locally managed systems, are complements to GPS but generally rely on GPS or highly local surveys for their core performance. Most commercial location systems do not provide an independent timing source, so are limited in their ability to be a viable backup to GPS.     

5     

Other technologies to deliver PNT independently of GPS
are under development or in the early stages of testbed deployment. These
include the National Association of Broadcasters’ Broadcast Positioning Service
(“BPS”). BPS seeks to supply PNT signals broadcast from terrestrial television
towers using ATSC 3.0, an international standard from the Advanced Television
Systems Committee. However, it has been demonstrated that BPS has accuracy
limitations relative to GPS. BPS also depends on ATSC 3.0, which is not
universally adopted by broadcasters, and has an uncertain adoption pipeline
among consumer electronics manufacturers and industry stakeholders. 

Subject to appropriate regulatory approvals, we believe that our NextGen solution offers the most economically viable wide-scale, terrestrial complement and backup to GPS that can be adopted in consumer devices such as smartphones. Because our NextGen solution leverages 5G broadband, we anticipate the capital expenditures associated with the network deployment will be associated with our future 5G partnerships, and we do not plan to seek Federal appropriations for the deployment of our NextGen system. While no single solution can complement and backup all GPS use cases, we believe that we offer an important component to securing the nation’s PNT infrastructure. 

Intellectual Property

Our ability to drive innovation in PNT services depends in part upon our ability to protect our core technologies and intellectual property. We rely upon a combination of patent, trademark, and trade secret laws in the United States and abroad, as well as license agreements and other contractual protections. In addition, we seek to protect our intellectual property rights through nondisclosure and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and through non-disclosure agreements with business partners and other third parties.

We regularly file applications for patents and have a significant number of patents in the United States and other countries where we do business.

As of December 31, 2024, we had approximately 149 issued patents domestically and internationally, which includes approximately 129 issued patents