Microsoft ordered to pay $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent after losing patent suit

[mandy]

Microsoft on Thursday lost the first of six patent lawsuits brought by Paris-based telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, and a federal district court jury set damages at US$1.5 billion. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker said the patents in question govern the conversion of audio into the digital MP3 file format on personal computers...

"We think this verdict is completely unsupported by the law or the facts," said Tom Burt, a Microsoft deputy general counsel...

"We believe that we properly licensed MP3 technology from its industry recognized licenser -- Fraunhofer. The damages award seems particularly outrageous when you consider we paid Fraunhofer only $16 million to license this technology."...

full article: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/nadh...-15B.xhtml

[rose]

Microsoft ordered to pay $1.5 billion

Boofuckinghoo 

[BellisimaJ.]

[quote author=rose link=topic=7865.msg45051#msg45051 date=1172447493]

Microsoft ordered to pay $1.5 billion

Booboinkinghoo 
[/quote]

Ditto what Rose said!

[mandy]

Update:

A federal judge has handed Microsoft a huge victory in years-old patent spat with telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent focusing on how personal computers running Windows play back MP3 music files, setting aside a $1.5 billion jury award granted after the software giant was found to have infringed on two digital music playback patents...

Judge Rudi Brewster of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego ruled that one of the patents involved in the case was not infringed upon by Microsoft -- directly contradicting the jury's findings. On the second patent, Brewster ruled that the court should not have considered the patent dispute because a co-owner of the intellectual property was not a party to the lawsuit...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/KG8qqpQG...ward.xhtml

[Kristijntje]

Update:

Microsoft must pay almost $368 million to Alcatel-Lucent, the world's largest supplier of telecommunications equipment, after a jury found two of Alcatel-Lucent's patents were infringed.

Alcatel-Lucent had asked for about $1.75 billion from Microsoft and Dell after claiming four of its patents were violated.

The federal court jury in San Diego on Friday also said Dell infringed one patent and owed Alcatel-Lucent $51,000...

full article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mi...tel05.html