ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,279,104, issued on April 15, was assigned to Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp. (San Francisco) and DOLBY INTERNATIONAL AB (Dublin).

"Loudness adjustment for downmixed audio content" was invented by Michael C. Ward (Orinda, Calif.), Jeffrey Riedmiller (Novato, Calif.), Scott Gregory Norcross (San Rafael, Calif.) and Alexander Stahlmann (Bubenreuth, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Audio content coded for a reference speaker configuration is downmixed to downmix audio content coded for a specific speaker configuration. One or more gain adjustments are performed on individual portions of the downmix audio content coded for the specifi...