Patent Dispute with Alcatel-Lucent Resolved

Long-running infringement litigation involving audio and video patents between Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft may finally be at an end, as both companies asked U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff in San Diego to grant a joint motion ending all claims in the suit in Jan. 2012.

The case was originally filed as an action between Lucent and Gateway in July 2000 claiming Gateway infringed on various technologies patented by Lucent, including audio and video codecs, position-sensing styluses, and touch-screen form-entry technology on Windows-based PCs sold by Gateway. Lucent was subsequently acquired by Alcatel, and Microsoft voluntarily joined the case in 2003 as part of its agreement to indemnify OEM partners against legal disputes involving intellectual property in bundled Microsoft software. Some of the original patents that Alcatel-Lucent claimed Microsoft infringed were invalidated.

In 2007, a jury originally felt Microsoft should be fined a record US$1.52 billion for the infringement. On appeal in July 2011, a second jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent US$70 million in damages for Microsoft’s infringement of an Alcatel-Lucent patent, and at that time there were indications that Microsoft might appeal. Huff reduced the award to $26.3 million in Nov. 2011. No settlement details were provided other than that both parties would bear their own costs of litigation.