Affiliates of Dolby Laboratories Inc. hit San Jose-based Adobe Systems Inc. with a copyright and licensing lawsuit Monday claiming that Adobe has been underpaying for the Dolby audio-processing technology it uses in its software. The lawsuit, filed by Dolby's lawyers at King & Spalding in federal court in San Francisco, claims that Adobe has for years scuttled Dolby's efforts to audit Adobe's sales to determine how much it's due.

“Notwithstanding having enforced hundreds of audits of its own licensees, and notwithstanding providing to Dolby repeated assurances that it would comply with its audit obligations, for over three years Adobe employed various tactics to frustrate Dolby's right to audit Adobe's inclusion of Dolby technologies in Adobe's products,” wrote the King & Spalding lawyers, who include Timothy Scott, the managing partner of the firm's Silicon Valley office, and Bruce Baber, who represented Google in both its copyright trial showdowns with Oracle.

In an emailed statement, an Adobe spokeswoman said the company doesn't usually comment on the details of pending litigation, but that the company “does not agree with Dolby's characterization of the issues concerning its audit of Adobe's past use of its software, as disclosed in its complaint.”

In Monday's complaint, Dolby claims that Adobe uses Dolby technology in much of its software, including Adobe's Audition, After Effects, Encore, Lightroom, Media Encoder, Prelude, Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro products. Dolby claims that Adobe has employed multiple tactics to breach a series of licensing agreements covering the period from about 2002 through 2017.  For instance, the suit claims that Adobe bundled multiple products together but only reported one sale to Dolby, failed to report multiple sales to a single customer, and failed to properly pay for upgrades to Adobe products as outlined in the licensing agreements.

The lawsuit, which includes claims of copyright infringement and contract-related claims stemming from the licensing agreements, seeks a judgment holding Adobe liable for infringing Dolby's copyrighted works. It also seeks an injunction forcing Adobe to comply with its audit duties under the licensing agreements.