Corner office podcast: Dolby chief on patent pools and EPO wins

Heath Hoglund, chief patent counsel at Dolby, wanted to be a judge when he was a student, but decided that audio-visual technology (and the intellectual property surrounding it) was the right field for him. Hoglund, who now has 15 years under his belt at Dolby and manages a team of 50 people, tells Managing IP in an exclusive podcast about the ins and outs of handling standards and IP at his company – and, in particular, about the increasing importance of patent pools. He also speaks about his respect for the EPO and how he and his team leverage results there to ensure smoother prosecution at other IP offices around the world. If that weren’t enough, Hoglund delves into the state of the IP licensing landscape.“We still see companies that decide to hold out for whatever reason and require active litigation to drive them to licences for technologies, for which the pool programmes are [already] extraordinarily well accepted,” he says.