Johnson-Grace Co.: The privately held multimedia engineering...

Johnson-Grace Co.: The privately held multimedia engineering company announced Wednesday that it has licensed its image compression software to America Online, the nation’s fastest-growing on-line service. Terms of the two-year agreement were not disclosed.

Johnson-Grace software will allow the on-line service’s 1 million users to view color photographs and graphics more quickly than is currently possible.

Robert Tatar, Johnson-Grace’s vice president for marketing, said the Orange County company is also negotiating to license its technology to other on-line services as well. Founded two years ago, Johnson-Grace has 18 employees.