Alcatel slaps Microsoft with patent infringement claim
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Meanwhile, in the big leagues... Fresh from Steve Ballmer's claim Linux infringes on Microsoft IP, Microsoft has itself succumbed to another accusation it is illegally using someone else's technology.â¦
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Internet phone service provider Vonage  Holdings Corp.  on Monday said it has been served with a  patent infringement lawsuit filed by two units of Verizon  Communications Inc. .
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Software company asks appeals court to cancel patent infringement judgment.
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A U.S. federal jury found that Microsoft Corp. infringed audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages, Microsoft said on Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - A judge in a San Diego court late Thursday dismissed one of several patent claims Alcatel-LucentÂ has made against Microsoft in several high-profile cases against the vendor, but that does not mean the software company is out of the woods yet. According to Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans, a judge in the U.S. District Court in San Diego ruled that Microsoft does not infringe a patent for speech-recognition technology asserted by Alcatel-Lucent. This is the only patent that was to be considered during a second trial in the series of claims, which had been scheduled in San Diego on March 19, he said. That trial has now been cancelled. Last week, a jury in the first of what had been six separate patent-infringement casesÂ ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billionÂ in damages to Alcatel-Lucent for infringing on patents for MP3 encoding and decoding technology. It was believed to be the largest patent-infringement damage award in history in the case that the then Lucent Technologies first filed against Microsoft and partners Dell and Gateway in 2003. Many believe the decision could put other companies that use MP3 technology at risk for patent-infringement claims from Alcatel-Lucent. The next and third case dealing with Alcatel-Lucent's patent-infringement claims, which focuses on user-interface technology and lists Microsoft, Dell, and Gateway as defendants, is scheduled to be held May 21, Evans said. Three other trials on Alcatel-Lucent patent-infringement claims will follow this year, with Microsoft being listed as defendants in two of those. The Alcatel-Lucent suit is not the only major patent case Microsoft is currently dealing with. Microsoft presented opening arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court last week in a six-year patent dispute with AT&T.
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InfoWorld - A judge in a San Diego court late Thursday dismissed one of several patent claims Alcatel-Lucent&#160;has made against Microsoft in several high-profile cases against the vendor, but that does not mean the software company is out of the woods yet.
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A lawsuit in which mobile maker Sendo accused Microsoft of stealing its technology and customers is settled.
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Microsoft Corp. must pay $1.52 billion in damages to telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA for violating two patents related to digital music, a federal jury ruled Thursday.
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Judge rules the Windows maker did not infringe on a speech-recognition patent; Alcatel-Lucent plans to appeal.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft presented oral arguments Wednesday before the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-year-old patent lawsuit filed by AT&T whose outcome could require U.S. software companies to pay fines for patent-infringing software assembled in other countries. At issue in the case is how the court will interpret an obscure section of U.S. patent law, Section 271F, which says that if a U.S. company makes product components in the U.S and supplies them to companies overseas -- and the products assembled from those components result in patent infringements -- the company must pay patent damages for products assembled overseas as well as those made stateside. AT&T originally filed the case in federal court in New York in 2001 claiming that Microsoft infringed on one of its patents for digitally coding and decoding speech in its Windows OS. AT&T set out to recover damages not only from copies of Windows manufactured in the U.S., but also those made in other countries from the master disk of Windows that was sent to those countries and used to assemble computers with the OS installed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in July 2005 upheld a lower-court ruling that Microsoft is liable to pay fines for foreign sales of patent-infringing software even if it was originally created in the U.S. In court Wednesday, Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued Microsoft's case, which claims that the patent law was aimed at closing a loophole that allowed companies to manufacture all of the components of patented inventions in the U.S., but avoid patent liability by assembling those U.S.-made components in other countries. "We believe this law was applied improperly by the lower court to find liability based solely on computers manufactured overseas," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. "A U.S. patent was never meant to apply to conduct that takes place entirely abroad." Therefore, Microsoft is asking that the Surpeme Court reverse the lower-court ruling. In a statement, Abha Divine, president and CEO of AT&T Knowledge Ventures, said the company believes that all U.S.-based sources of innovation, including the software development community, can benefit from patent laws that allow for "appropriate and fair" protection of all new inventions and technologies. The outcome of the case will depend on how the Supreme Court interprets the words "components" and "supplies" in the law, said John E. Daniel, partner in law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel's Intellectual Property Department in New York. "Some people have a concern that [the lower court ruling] seems to be beyond what was intended," he said. "When [Congress] passed the legislation,Â it was thinking of making physical components, not software. The comeback is, 'What's the difference?' You still make copies, and Microsoft makes money based on people selling those copies." Microsoft has had some unusual allies in this case, such as its former nemesis the U.S. government and competitor Yahoo, both of whom have filed briefs in support of the vendor's argument. Companies fear that a precedent may be set that will potentially cost U.S. software companies millions of dollars in fines. There is also a concern that U.S. companies will take their research and development offshore to avoid fines, Daniel said.
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A US jury found that Microsoft infringed audio patents held by the world's biggest software maker Alcatel-Lucent.   Microsoft has been ordered to pay Pounds 778m in damages, however the firm says it may appeal the ruling.   It says the verdict is unsupported by the law or the facts.
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InfoWorld - A California-based software company has filed a patent infringement suit against Microsoft over two patents that enable the creation of virtual private networks.
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Software company VirnetX filed suit against Microsoft Thursday, accusing the Redmond company of infringing on two of its patents regarding virtual private networking.
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Sendo sued Microsoft in December 2002, alleging that it had stolen proprietary technology and trade secrets and used them to move into the mobile phone market. Microsoft denied the charges and had filed a countersuit.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has voted to launch an investigation into patent infringement claims against Nokia, whichÂ filed its own complaintÂ with the commission in August. The complaint against Nokia comes from InterDigital, a vendor of wireless technology products based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. InterDigital filed a complaint on Aug. 7 alleging that Nokia has infringed two of InterDigital's 3G (third-generation) wireless patents. InterDigitals' complaint accused Nokia of an unfair trade practice by importing 3G handsets into the U.S., and it asked the ITC to bar Nokia from importing products with the infringing technology. The ITC, in a news release Wednesday, said it has initiated an investigation into InterDigital's complaint. The commission will set a target date for completing the investigation within 45 days, the ITC said. "The ITC has not yet made any decision on the merits of the case," the commission said. Nokia, based in Finland, filed its ITC complaint Aug. 17, asking the commission to ban the import of Qualcomm chip sets that allegedly infringe on five Nokia patents. The commissionÂ banned some Qualcomm importsÂ in June, after complaints from Broadcom. A Nokia spokeswoman didn't immediately return a call seeking comment on the ITC investigation. The InterDigital patents involve algorithms for how 3G wireless signals most efficiently travel through the air, said Jack Indekeu, InterDigital's director of corporate marketing. The company has been talking with Nokia about the patent claims, he said. "We haven't moved forward," Indekeu said. "That's why we have to move in this direction." The InterDigital claims don't directly relate to the patent claims against Qualcomm, he added. "Companies that have spent the time and resources to invent technology are protecting their intellectual property," he said.
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A federal jury in San Diego yesterday ordered Microsoft to pay $1.52 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for violating two patents for a technology used by hundreds of companies that allows users to play digital music on computers, cellphones and other portable devices.
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The U.S. International Trade Commission said that QualcommÂ is infringing on one of Broadcom's patents, dealing a blow to Qualcomm in anÂ ongoing patent battleÂ between the companies.