On September 19, 2015, Planet Labs Inc. (Planet Labs) completed the acquisition of the geospatial companies of Blackbridge Corp. (BlackBridge), including its five-satellite Earth-imaging constellation as well as an archive of 6 billion square kilometers of imagery captured over the past six years.
Planet Labs, founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, is an Earth-imaging private company based in San Francisco, California. The company designs and manufactures Triple-CubeSat miniature satellites called Doves that are then delivered into orbit as passengers on other missions.
Founded in 1986 and based in Lethbridge, Alberta, Blackbridge provides end-to-end solutions for the geospatial value chain, including satellite operations, groundstation services, data center and geocloud solutions, worldwide distribution through over 100 partners, and the creation of value added products and services.
Planet Labs was represented by Stikeman Elliott LLP with a team including Kim Le, Julien Lefebvre (corporate), Frank Mathieu, Nathaniel Lacasse (tax), Kris Noonan (employment), Andrea Boctor, Aiden Talai (benefits), Michael Kilby (regulatory), Kenton Rein, Maciej Zielnik (banking) and Jonathan Auerbach (intellectual property). Morrison & Foerster LLP advised Planet Labs with a cross-border corporate team led by San Francisco partners Suz Mac Cormac and Eric McCrath and Denver associate Tyler Sewell, and that included Berlin partner Dirk Besse, Berlin associate Moritz Heuser, and San Francisco associate Ali Assareh.