As if BlackBerry didn’t have enough to deal with at the moment, Dolby Laboratories announced that Research in Motion agreed to license Dolby’s advanced audio technologies and to pay patent royalties, resulting in the dismissal of two lawsuits recently filed by Dolby against RIM.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but Dolby has informed analysts it expected $15 million in back royalties – plus interest – from RIM in the fiscal fourth quarter. Much of Dolby’s revenue, 78 percent in its most recent report, comes from licensing.
The new RIM license agreement is on the standard terms offered by Dolby subsidiary Via Licensing Corp. and covers the implementation of the HE AAC (High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding) standard, including use of Dolby’s audio compression technologies in RIM’s BlackBerry smart phones and Playbook tablet devices. Dolby’s patented audio compression technologies contribute to the HE AAC standard, which makes possible playback of digital music and other audio that has been compressed to less than 10 percent of its original digital file size.
“We are pleased to welcome RIM into Dolby’s family of mobile technology licensees,” said Andy Sherman, executive vice president and general counsel of Dolby. “We believe in and will continue to protect the value of our intellectual property.”
Dolby International AB v. Research in Motion Ltd. (RIMM), 11cv2931, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco) was filed June 15, with a similar suit filed the same day in the Mannheim District Court in Mannheim, Germany. RIM signed a license agreement shortly after that.
Related Links:
Bloomberg – http://tinyurl.com/3ryc7cd
Wall Street Journal – http://tinyurl.com/3zzq9cl
