RIM Ties Up With Dolby For Audio Technology

Global audio technology firm Dolby Laboratories has said it has entered into a license agreement with Canadian BlackBerry maker Reserch in Motion (RIM) for using Dolby’s patented audio technologies.

The issue was subject of two lawsuits recently filed by Dolby against RIM. Following the agreement, the audio firm also dismissed the cases.

“We are pleased to welcome RIM into Dolby’s family of mobile technology licensees. We believe in and will continue to protect the value of our intellectual property,” said Andy Sherman, executive vice president and general counsel of Dolby.

The company had filed a law suit against RIM stating that the Canadian firm was using Dolby’s industry leading audio technologies. The suits were filed in the U.S. district court in San Francisco, and in the Mannheim district court in Germany.

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RIM obtained its license through Via Licensing Corporation, a Dolby subsidiary that licenses patents essential to the high efficiency advanced audio coding (HE AAC) international standard on behalf of multiple essential patent owners. Dolby’s patented audio compression technologies contribute to that standard.

HE AAC provides high quality digital audio compression and is used in consumer electronics devices such as smart phones, portable music players, computer tablets and personal computers. It makes possible playback of digital music and other digitised audio that has been compressed to less than 10 percent of its original digital file size.

RIM employs HE AAC technologies in its BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablet devices.