Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ACQUISITIONS & MERGERS NEWS: EC approves Dolby’s acquisition of digital cinema solutions company Doremi, (Oct 28, 2014)
Organizations Mentioned:Dolby Laboratories, Inc. | Doremi Laboratory, Inc.
By Greg Hammond, J.D.
The European Commission (EC) has approved the proposed acquisition of Doremi Laboratory, Inc. by Dolby Laboratories, Inc., finding that the transaction will not lead to any anticompetitive effects, the EC announced yesterday.
Dolby is a U.S. company that specializes in the design and manufacture of audio, video, and voice technologies, and Doremi is a U.S. company that produces and designs digital cinema servers (DCS). “DCS are one of the main components of a digital cinema system, along with a projector and an audio processor,” the EC stated. They are used to “load, store, decrypt, decode and re-encrypt digital film files.”
According to the EC, although Dolby’s and Doremi’s activities significantly overlap, the proposed acquisition will not have anticompetitive effects because: (1) there are alternative suppliers of DCS, some of which recently entered the market; (2) the existence of industry specifications facilitate customer switching between competitors; and (3) the merged entity would lack market power over new DCS sales and control over the installed base of DCS.
Companies: Doremi Laboratory, Inc.; Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
News: AcquisitionsMergers Antitrust