A federal judge in San Diego has ruled against a handful of defenses presented by Microsoft Corp. in a patent trial that saw a $1.5 billion jury decision delivered against the company in February. The U.S. District Court jury on Feb. 22 found Microsoft infringed on two patents related to MP3 digital music technology asserted by Alcatel-Lucent, and based the considerable size of its award on worldwide sales of Microsoft products using the technology.
Parallel to the jury's deliberations on the patents, Judge Rudi Brewster heard five separate defenses presented by Microsoft, and on Monday filed a ruling against four of them. Brewster wrote that "Lucent is the sole owner of the (MP3) reissue patents," and that "Microsoft is not entitled to any intervening rights." If the judge had ruled in Microsoft's favor, it could have placed some limitations on the hefty jury verdict. Microsoft still intends to ask the court to review the verdict, but will wait until the judge has ruled on the fifth defense before it does so, according to a Microsoft spokesman.
Microsoft has claimed that the patents were developed jointly by an Alcatel-Lucent predecessor company owned by AT&T and Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, and that it had licensed the technology from Fraunhofer.
View: Full Article @ MarketWatch
Parallel to the jury's deliberations on the patents, Judge Rudi Brewster heard five separate defenses presented by Microsoft, and on Monday filed a ruling against four of them. Brewster wrote that "Lucent is the sole owner of the (MP3) reissue patents," and that "Microsoft is not entitled to any intervening rights." If the judge had ruled in Microsoft's favor, it could have placed some limitations on the hefty jury verdict. Microsoft still intends to ask the court to review the verdict, but will wait until the judge has ruled on the fifth defense before it does so, according to a Microsoft spokesman.
Microsoft has claimed that the patents were developed jointly by an Alcatel-Lucent predecessor company owned by AT&T and Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, and that it had licensed the technology from Fraunhofer.
View: Full Article @ MarketWatch
intellectual property rights work both ways suckas
intellectual property rights work both ways suckas
I hope microsoft wins actually, id hate to pay microsofts bill in the form of added pricing.
Hey microsoft, why not just buy out Alcatel-Lucent? their market capitalization is only 13 times the bill your paying to them now, and you'd have another headway into the telecommunications industry. Its called vertical integration in business terms i believe, and it only means good things from a purly capitalistic point of view.
Goes back to the old MS adgage; if you cant beat em, buy em.
I hope microsoft wins actually, id hate to pay microsofts bill in the form of added pricing.
Hey microsoft, why not just buy out Alcatel-Lucent? their market capitalization is only 13 times the bill your paying to them now, and you'd have another headway into the telecommunications industry. Its called vertical integration in business terms i believe, and it only means good things from a purly capitalistic point of view.
And how! They failed at their intended line of business, so they're switching to a litigation firm like SCO.
It's funny that you're comparing Alcatel-Lucent with SCO: both taking other companies to court over IP issues, and in both trials MS was involved.
As someone said some posts above, IP works both ways.
Regarding Alcatel-Lucent, why would they go after other companies? They risk their patent to be invalidated by other jury.
Eaxctly. It's about high noon the stop using mp3 and switch to better alternatives.
I wonder what them winning could have in effect to the mp3 community at large...
They can basically start suing anyone they feel like? Because I can sure not think of many who have seen this coming.
Time for devs to start using formats like Ogg more just to avoid the risks of this patent jungle..?
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