Alcatel Awarded $367 Million in MS Patent Case

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday April 4, 2008 @09:39PM 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.'"

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Re:patents are really not the way by GordonCopestake · 2008-04-04 22:22 · Score: 0, Offtopic

What are the alternatives to stop people stealing your code? Whilst open source works for many people, companies that make money from code need to protect it somehow... Only the threat of huge financial hits (like $367m) stop (or dont in this case) stop people from stealing code.