LG Underpaying Audio Coding Royalties, Alleges Patent Pool That Includes Ericsson, Microsoft
LG is “substantially” underpaying the royalties it owes on Advanced Audio Coding product shipments since signing a January 2009 patent licensing agreement to use the audio-compression technology, and has thwarted auditors from examining its “books and records,” alleged Via Licensing…
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(in Pacer) Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. Via runs the AAC patent pool for parent Dolby Labs and Ericsson, Microsoft, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic and others. LG “breached its obligations to cooperate, and refused to allow a full and fair audit of its sales” under the license agreement, it said. LG didn’t comment Friday. The license sets a “standard” royalty fee structure that starts at 98 cents a unit for the first 500,000 AAC devices shipped in any country globally, and scales down to 10 cents a unit for device quantities of 75 million units or more.