Court Says Microsoft Must Pay in Dispute Over MP3 Patent
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By Saul Hansell  Microsoft has been ordered by a U.S. jury to pay $1.52 billion in a patent dispute over the MP3 digital file format, the technology at the heart of the digital music boom.  If upheld on appeal, it would be the largest patent judgment on record.
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Microsoft agreed yesterday to pay more than $500 million to settle a potential antitrust lawsuit by rival software maker Novell but will likely have to fight another part of Novell&#39;s claim in court.
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Microsoft Corp. is fighting a rejection by US patent authorities of a patent for its FAT (file allocation table) file system, the company said Thursday.
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Microsoft will suffer serious harm if it is forced to provide a version of Windows without Windows Media Player audio-visual software, its lawyer told a European Union court on Friday.
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Blog: A Zune fan site is reporting on a Microsoft patent filing that describes a system for paying Zune users commissions for sharing a song that the recipient ends up buying.
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After EU antitrust ruling, company questions whether Microsoft's patent arrangement is compatible with open-source licensing.
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A federal jury's ruling that Microsoft infringed on two MP3 patents and must pay $1.52 billion in damages could turn into a major sour note for other technology companies
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Microsoft Corp. must sell a version of Windows software without a music and video player and license proprietary information to competitors after a European Union court rejected the company&#39;s bid to suspend an antitrust order.
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A panel of judges on Thursday is scheduled to hear Microsoft's appeal in a case where a jury ordered the software maker to pay $520.6 million in damages after finding that Internet Explorer (IE) infringed on a patent.
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Microsoft Corp. is fighting a rejection by U.S. patent authorities of a patent for its FAT (file allocation table) file system, the company said Thursday. Meanwhile, it's celebrating a jury decision clearing it of patent infringement charges related to a feature in its Office software.
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Software giant contesting order to pay $521 million in patent infringement verdict.
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Blog: The companies are about to face off in a federal appeals court over their ongoing patent dispute.
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MicrosoftÂ 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.
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Microsoft argued in a Luxembourg court on Thursday that the European Competition Commission&#39;s antitrust decision against it would infringe on its intellectual property and cause serious and irreparable harm to the company.
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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) - Microsoft has won a patent for a digital-watermarking technology that could be used to protect the rights of content owners even when digital music is distributed without DRM protection.  The technology, called "stealthy audio watermarking," inserts and detects watermarks in audio signals that can identify the content producer, "providing a signature that is embedded in the audio signal and cannot be removed," according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trade Organization (USPTO). The application for U.S. patent 7,266,697 was filed May 3, 2004, by Darko Kirovski and Henrique Malvar, both of whom work at Microsoft Research. Malvar is a Microsoft distinguished engineer and managing director of Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, and Kirovski is a researcher there. Microsoft currently has DRM technology called Windows Media DRM that encrypts audio files and protects them from misuse or unauthorized redistribution. The company has traditionally been an outspoken proponent of using DRM to protect owners of digital content, though it said earlier this year it would consider selling DRM-free songs online after rival Apple struck a deal with EMI Group to do so. Forensic digital watermarking technology like the technology Microsoft has patented doesn't encrypt files the way DRM technology does or prevent people from unauthorized use. However, it can be used to prove who owns the content of the digital file by encoding a file with a unique digital signature. That means illegally traded songs could be tracked back to the original purchaser, allowing authorities to identify illegal sharers and serving as a deterrent. The technology could also be used to track files for royalty distribution. In fact, Apple has been inserting simple watermarks into digital audio files that include personal information about the purchaser on some files sold over iTunes so those files can be traced back to their purchaser in the case of unauthorized distribution. However, Microsoft's watermark is much more intrinsic to the file and cannot be stripped out easily by hackers, like Apple's can, said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science PhD candidate at Princeton University who specializes in DRM technology. "It's much harder for people to remove from the recording," he said. The trick for these watermarks to be effective for digital music files, however, is that they must be inaudible and thus undetectable by those listening to the files, which has been difficult for those who have tried to create this technology in the past, Halderman said. Indeed, in their filing, Kirovski and Malvar acknowledged that to work properly, the watermarks must not only be inaudible, but also "must be scattered throughout the file in such a way that they cannot be identified and manipulated" and "be robust enough so that it can withstand normal changes to the file, such as reductions from ... compression algorithms." Microsoft Tuesday declined to comment on how it plans to use the watermark technology it has patented. However, Microsoft Research already has licensed similar yet non-forensic watermarking technology to a company called Activated Content, which is using the technology to insert and extract non-secure data into audio files.
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A&#160;class-action suit filed against Apple&#160;alleges the company unfairly uses technological restrictions with its iPod line and iTunes Music Store to beat out competitors.The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is the latest one to accuse Apple of unfair business practices. Apple is facing similar legal actions and scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe.The suit was filed Dec. 31 by Stacie Somers, a resident of San Diego County, California, who bought a 30GB iPod from Target, a retail store. Others who bought an iPod or content from Apple&#39;s iTunes store after Dec. 31, 2003, may join the suit.The suit calls for Apple to forfeit money it earned from the unfair practices and pay the plaintiffs damages.It alleges that Apple has constricted the market by not enabling iPods to play content in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, Microsoft&#39;s copy-protection technology. Further, Apple sells songs on the iTunes store with its own copy-protection technology, FairPlay, which is incompatible with music players other than the iPod.The suit contends iPod-owning consumers can only buy music from iTunes, an unlawful tie-in that violates U.S. antitrust laws. Apple could license the WMA format for as little as $0.03 per iPod, or for a total of $800,000 based on Apple&#39;s 2005 iPod sales, the suit reads.The suit may quickly become less relevant as many online music retailers, including Apple, expand their offerings of music free of copy-protection restrictions, also known as DRM (digital rights management).DRM-free tracks offer the advantage of being compatible on a wider range of devices. In May, Apple began selling songs from the label EMI without DRM. Also,&#160;Amazon.com now sells song in MP3 format, and Universal Music Group has tested selling DRM-free music.&#160;