Jury orders Microsoft to pay Lucent-Alcatel $1.5B fine
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
Microsoft must pay $1.5 billion in damages to Lucent-Alcatel for infringing on patents for MP3 encoding and decoding technology, a U.S. jury said Thursday.
Lucent-Alcatel, which was then Lucent Technologies, first filed suit in 2003 against Microsoft customers Dell and Gateway for infringing on 15 patented technologies it said were being used in Microsoft's Windows Media Player in its Windows client OS.
Microsoft filed a countersuit in a U.S. District Court in San Diego against Lucent-Alcatel to discourage additional legal action against its customers.