"We are pleased to welcome RIM into Dolby's group of mobile technology licencees. We believe in and will still protect the value of our intellectual property, " Dolby Executive Vice-President and General Counsel Andy Sherman said inside a statement issued here.
RIM obtained its licence through By way of Licensing Corporation, a Dolby subsidiary that licences patents essential to Higher Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE AAC) international standards with respect to multiple essential patent owners.
Dolby's patented audio compression technologies bring about that standard.
HE AAC enables highly efficient digital sound compression, which allows manufacturers and consumers to provide and revel in high quality audio while using extremely limited amounts of transmission and/or space for storage for such audio, such as in the case of cell phones.
RIM employs HE AAC technologies in its Blackberry mobile phones and Playbook tablet devices.
On June 15, 2011, Dolby had filed lawsuits against RIM that centered on RIM's use of Dolby's industry-leading audio technologies without the licensing agreement and payment of corresponding royalties.
The suits were filed in america District Court in San Francisco and in the Mannheim Area Court in Mannheim, Germany
The licence agreement is about the standard terms offered by Via Licensing and covers the implementation from the HE AAC standard, including the use of Dolby's sound compression technologies in RIM's smartphones and tablet devices.
Via Licensing Corporation is really a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories that was formed in 2002 to build up and administer licencing programmes for mandated, de facto, and emerging standards with respect to innovative technology companies in the audio, broadcast, wireless, as well as automotive markets.