Dolby and RIM Drop Lawsuits, Reach Licensing Deal
Dolby Laboratories and Research in Motion have agreed to a licensing deal, ending a legal confrontation over patents.
Under the agreement, RIM maker of BlackBerrys and PlayBooks, will pay Dolby licensing fees to use some of Dolby's technologies. In return, Dolby has dropped its two patent infringement lawsuits against the manufacturer.
Dolby sued RIM in June over patents that cover High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding, which lets smartphone users play high-quality audio compressed to less than 10 percent of original file size. Dolby argued that RIM had been using the standard in their BlackBerrys and PlayBooks without Dolby's agreement. The suits were dismissed in federal court after RIM and Dolby agreed to a licensing deal that will have RIM paying Dolby $15 million in back royalties as well as interest income, according to report from Bloomberg.
"We are pleased to welcome RIM into Dolby's family of mobile technology licensees," Andy Sherman, executive VP and general counsel at Dolby, said in a statement. "We believe in and will continue to protect the value of our intellectual property."
Dolby has been licensing its audio technologies to consumer electronics companies including other smartphone manufacturers like Nokia, Apple and Samsung. The company earned $181 million -- 83 percent of the company's total revenue in the third quarter of this year -- with its licensing deals.
Patent litigation has been especially prevalent with tech companies with such big names like Apple and Samsung suing and countersuing across the globe.