Jury orders Microsoft to pay Lucent-Alcatel $1.5B fine
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(InfoWorld) - 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. Lucent-Alcatel, which was then Lucent Technologies, first filed suit in 2003 against Microsoft customers DellÂ and GatewayÂ for infringing on 15 patented technologies it said were being used in Microsoft's Windows Media Player in its Windows client OS. Microsoft filed a countersuit in a U.S. District Court in San Diego against Lucent-Alcatel to discourage additional legal action against its customers. A judge threw out the cases on two of the patents and separated the remaining 13 patent infringement disputes into six separate groups. Thursday's decision marks the end of the first trial on those groups of patents; five jury trials remain pending, Microsoft said. In a statement from its public relations firm, Microsoft spoke out against the court's decision and said it plans to appeal if necessary. "We think this verdict is completely unsupported by the law or the facts," the company said in a statement. "Like hundreds of other companies large and small, we believe that we properly licensed MP3 technology from its industry recognized licensor -- Fraunhofer. The damages award seems particularly outrageous when you consider we paid Fraunhofer only $16 million to license this technology." Lucent-Alcatel could not be reached immediately for comment Thursday.
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Judge dismisses one of several patent claims by Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft, but others remain.
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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, the No. 1 software  maker 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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Sprint Corp. and AT&#38;T Corp. have agreed to pay a total of nearly $1.5 million to settle government charges that they denied or limited phone service to hundreds of thousands of customers they considered credit risks without notifying the consumers of their rights.
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A European court dealt Microsoft Corp. a severe blow Monday as it rejected the company's appeal of a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling and upheld a $613 million fine against the world's largest software maker.
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The award for fees and costs comes in a case in which Microsoft agreed to allocate $1.1 billion for California consumers. By Associated Press.
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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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SAN FRANCISCO -- A judge is ordering Microsoft Corp. to pay $112.5 million to attorneys who successfully sued the software maker for monopolizing a segment of California&#39;s market.
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With Alcatel-Lucent having been awarded $1.5 billion from Microsoft by a Jury in San Diego yesterday, the other hundreds of companies who hold Fraunhofer/Thomson licenses to the MP3 audio format whose names aren't "Microsoft" must be asking themselves whether similar fates await them in the near future.
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Microsoft lost on Monday a landmark EU antitrust case at Europe&#39;s second-highest court, which upheld a record 497-million-euro (690-million-dollar) fine imposed by the European Commission in 2004.
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(InfoWorld) - A former Alcatel executive has pleaded guilty to paying more than $2.5 million in bribes to secure a telephone contract with Costa Rica's state telecommunications agency, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. Christian Sapsizian pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act at U.S. District Court in Miami, the DOJ said in a statement. He is set to be sentenced on December 20 and now faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and $580,000 in fines. According to the DOJ, Sapsizian admitted to paying the bribes to a director at Costa Rica's Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, in order to secure mobile telephone contracts for his company. Alcatel was eventually awarded a $149 million mobile phone contract in August 2001, the department said. Sapsizian had been employed by Alcatel and its subsidiaries for more than 20 years.Â Alcatel merged with Lucent TechnologiesÂ in late 2006 and the joint company is now known as Alcatel-Lucent. The Federal Bureau of Investigation continues to investigate the matter, the DOJ said. Alcatel-Lucent could not be reached immediately for comment.
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A U.S. jury found that Vonage Holdings Corp had infringed patents owned by Sprint Nextel Corp and ordered the Internet phone company to pay $69.5 million in damages, triggering a 34 percent fall in its shares.
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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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A federal jury yesterday ordered Vonage Holdings to pay Sprint Nextel $69.5 million in damages for violating six of its patents, prompting analysts to question whether the troubled Internet phone company could survive.
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A top European court on Monday handed Microsoft a surprise defeat in its epic antitrust battles, backing the European Commission&#39;s 2004 record fine of 497 million euros (690 million dollars) on the software giant.
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A federal jury said Thursday that software maker Microsoft Corp. infringed audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages.