James Delahunty
5 Apr 2008 21:13
Microsoft Corp. has revealed that it will appeal a jury verdict on Friday that ordered it to pay $367.4 million to Alcatel-Lucent for two offenses of patent infringement. Meanwhile the company was found not to have infringed on a video decoding patent related to the way the Windows operating system plays DVDs, which wasn't appreciated by Alcatel-Lucent.
Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Mary Lou Ambrus said the company was disappointed on the decision over the video patent. Still, $367.4 million is no small sum, and Microsoft is set to contest the decision. "We do not believe the jury's verdict against Microsoft on the two user interface patents is supported by the facts or the law," said Tom Burt, a deputy general counsel at Microsoft, in a statement.
He continued: "We will move immediately to have the two verdicts against Microsoft overturned." This is just the latest decision in many stemming from the approach taken by Lucent Technologies in 2003 in claiming patent infringement offenses by Gateway Inc. and Dell. Alcatel bought Lucent in 2006.
In 2003, Microsoft added itself to the list of defendants to protect its PC-maker partners, saying the patents were closely tied to its Windows operating system.