Microsoft wins suit on MP3 use
A judge ruled on Monday that Microsoft doesn’t have to pay Alcatel-Lucent $1.5 billion, overturning a jury verdict that promised to shake up the digital music industry.
US Senior District Court Judge Rudi Brewster sided of a verdict in a lawsuit field against the US software giant by the French firm. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said that ruling by the judge reversing the jury’s $1.52 billion verdict against Microsoft was a victory for consumers of digital music and a triumph for common sense in the patent system.
The trail that ended in US District Court in San Diego in February centred on MP3 audio technology used in the Windows Media Player. Alcatel-Lucent argued that technology used to encode and decode digitalaudio files in Media Player infringed of two of its patents. Microsoft said that it had paid Munich-based Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft $16 million to legally use the disputed MP3 technology.
In his ruling, Mr.Brewster concluded that the US software giant did not infringe on one of the patents and that Fraunhofer would need to join Alcatel-Lucent’s infringement suit for it to be valid in court.
