Microsoft ordered to pay $367mn to Alcatel-Lucent for patent infringement

Microsoft Corp. has been ordered to pay $367 million in damages to Alcatel-Lucent, the world's largest supplier of telecommunications equipment, in a patent infringement case.

The jury in U.S. District Court in San Diego decided that Microsoft should make up for infringing two patents related to user interface technology. But, it set the software giant free of another Alcatel-Lucent allegation of patent infringement related to video decoding.

Microsoft filed counterclaims that both alleged the Alcatel-Lucent patents aren't valid and challenged other patents held by the company.

The company hopes to overturn the recent infringement verdict and called the video patent ruling a victory for many companies that use MPEG video-decoding technology.

Alcatel-Lucent was seeking about $1.75 billion from Microsoft and Dell after claiming four of its patents were violated.

The federal court jury in San Diego on Friday also said Dell infringed one patent and owed Alcatel-Lucent $51,000.

In February 2007, a San Diego jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent a record $1.52 billion in damages after ruling in the first trial that Microsoft's Windows Media Player violated Lucent patents related to the MP3 digital-audio standard.

The judgment was reversed by U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster in August who found that one of the two patents wasn't infringed and that Microsoft had a valid license for the second one.

"We do not believe the jury's verdict against Microsoft on the two user-interface patents is supported by the facts or the law," Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Tom Burt said of the latest case. "We feel confident the verdicts will be overturned, just as the court overturned a verdict last year by a San Diego jury in Alcatel-Lucent's favor in a dispute with Microsoft concerning widely used MP3 technology."