Microsoft Tentatively Fined $1.5 Billion Dollars
This post was published 2 years 8 months 28 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.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 $1.52 billion in damages to telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA for violating two patents related to digital music, a federal jury ruled Thursday.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software company said the patents in question govern the conversion of audio into the digital MP3 file format on personal computers.
I love when courts award Dr. Evil sums of money!
I’m fighting the urge to quote Austin Powers here…
Maybe Lucent can use some of that 1.5B to dig themselves out of the mess that the execs have turned the company into lately.
I kinda feel for M$ 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.
You mean the real DR. EVIL here would be Microsoft.
anyone actually know what patent was violated?
I think something to do with the patent that ntp has on breathing? also the one that sco has on eating.