Microsoft Tentatively Fined $1.5 Billion Dollars

February 22, 2007 by Dan in News,Stupid with 5 Comments

In the first round of what will be a long drawn out legal battle a Judge has ruled that the MP3 codec used in Windows (which Microsoft believed they legally licensed from Fraunhofer) violates patents owned by Lucent.

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.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software company said the patents in question govern the conversion of audio into the digital MP3 file format on personal computers.

I love when courts award Dr. Evil sums of money!

Myke

I’m fighting the urge to quote Austin Powers here…
Matt W

Maybe Lucent can use some of that 1.5B to dig themselves out of the mess that the execs have turned the company into lately.

I kinda feel for M$ in this case. It seems that once-dominant companies will sue anybody these days to remain afloat. Hell, wasn’t Lucent already in a patent dispute with M$ over something to do with the Xbox 360?

Does anybody remember SCO vs. Novell/Linux? SCO should be changed to SCUM.
http://www.zdnet.com Intel

You mean the real DR. EVIL here would be Microsoft.
hitsuji

anyone actually know what patent was violated?
Mike D

I think something to do with the patent that ntp has on breathing? also the one that sco has on eating.

Microsoft Tentatively Fined $1.5 Billion Dollars

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