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New Judge in LG’s Dolby Antitrust Suit is ex-Verizon Regional President

LG’s antitrust case alleging Dolby Labs reneged on its ATSC commitments to license AC-4 audio codec patents for NextGenTV on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms (see 2201060058) was reassigned Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in Manhattan, the 1:22-cv-42…

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docket report shows (in Pacer). Judge Lewis Kaplan is no longer assigned. Crotty, former corporation counsel to Rudy Giuliani in his first term as New York mayor, was Verizon New York and Connecticut president until President George W. Bush appointed him to the federal bench in 2005. LG seeks a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dolby to stop conduct that LG alleges will harm its brand, but the conduct is hard to definitively discern because the public version of the complaint and its accompanying documents are redacted. LG and Dolby have worked together for more than 30 years “to create high-quality consumer electronics for use in home entertainment, automobiles and mobile devices,” says one of the complaint's few unredacted passages. Yet LG now seeks a declaratory judgment from the court that it has complied with its AC-4 license agreements “in all material aspects and that Dolby has no basis to terminate” those agreements. Dolby and LG didn't comment by Wednesday.