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Alcatel Awarded $367 Million in MS Patent Case

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the new-business-models dept.

eldavojohn writes "For violating two Alcatel-Lucent patents in its Windows user interface, Microsoft was ordered to pay Alcatel-Lucent $367 Million Friday. From the article, 'Microsoft, which will seek to have the verdict overturned, said Alcatel-Lucent was seeking $1.5 billion in damages related to the four patents named in the case. Microsoft said the jury found that Microsoft did not infringe on Alcatel's video decoding technology patent. The fourth patent in the lawsuit was asserted only against Dell Inc, which was found not to have infringed, according to Microsoft.'"

6 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Very short article by 26199 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This one has a little more info. Does anyone have a link for the actual patents?

  2. Better article by 26199 · · Score: 3, Informative

    And this one goes on to mention that Microsoft will now proceed to sue Alcatel-Lucent over nine patents.

    That's going to hurt. Patent lawsuits are not a good game to get into if you actually produce something.

  3. Not to sound trite by OakLEE · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's just a jury verdict. Being a patent case, it will be appealed and probably be heard, so I doubt anything is certain about the verdict.

    That said, I think Alcatel-Lucent should be more worried about their current CEO, Patricia Russo. This partial win is about all she can lay claim to besides the 45% slide in ALU's stock and the 70% slide in Lucent's stock prior to the merger. She'll need a couple more of these to make up for her Fiorina-esque management of the company. (To be fair, she's not the sociopathic power monger that Fiorina was. She's just as inept at management.)

    --
    The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
  4. Re:patents will end up being ignored by cashdot · · Score: 3, Informative

    the problem is that right now -anything- is being considered a bloody invention You are aware, that this is valid only for the US patent system? The US patent system is different (and IMHO worse) than all other patent systems in many ways, like 'first to file', triple damages, non-compliance with the international patent classification system, prior art searcb almost exclusivly within their own patents, ...
  5. Re:patents are really not the way by uffe_nordholm · · Score: 2, Informative

    To the best of my knowledge source code is protected by copyright. Obviously changing variable should not be enough to circumvent this, but whether it in reality is enough or not I don't know.

  6. Re:patents are really not the way by Machtyn · · Score: 2, Informative

    But if the coders make their money by making their original code better, what's to stop others from stealing it again and selling it cheaper still. Thus the original coder never makes any money.

    I still think it is sad that the inventor of one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, the television, made very little money on it since the corporations just waited out the patents.