February 23, 2007 at 22:47$ 1.5 billion fine in favor of Alcatel-Lucent
The US Federal Court in San Diego ruled in Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft, which accused the latter of violating a license to use the MP3 audio format. The judge ordered Microsoft to pay the claimant company $ 1.52 billion in compensation for the fact that MP3 encoding was supported by the Windows media player.
The story that preceded this judgment began in 2003, when Lucent (then not yet purchased by Alcatel) filed several lawsuits against PC makers for alleged use of their proprietary technology. Microsoft, which had legal defense contracts with Lucent opponents, stood up for them in court.
As a result, she also received subpoenas. The lawsuits complained about the XBox 360 set-top box (which used a number of licensed solutions from Lucent from the old XBox, although such continuity was not clearly indicated in the agreement between the two companies) and MP3 audio compression technology, which MS licensed from the Fraunhofer Institute, but “ forgot ”to ask permission for its use from the second co-author - Bell Labs, which has been owned by Lucent since 2005.
Microsoft plans to appeal this decision first with the same judge, and then, if necessary, file an appeal.
via WSJ
The story that preceded this judgment began in 2003, when Lucent (then not yet purchased by Alcatel) filed several lawsuits against PC makers for alleged use of their proprietary technology. Microsoft, which had legal defense contracts with Lucent opponents, stood up for them in court.
As a result, she also received subpoenas. The lawsuits complained about the XBox 360 set-top box (which used a number of licensed solutions from Lucent from the old XBox, although such continuity was not clearly indicated in the agreement between the two companies) and MP3 audio compression technology, which MS licensed from the Fraunhofer Institute, but “ forgot ”to ask permission for its use from the second co-author - Bell Labs, which has been owned by Lucent since 2005.
Microsoft plans to appeal this decision first with the same judge, and then, if necessary, file an appeal.
via WSJ