Microsoft to Pay $1.52 Billion in Patent Suit Damages

An anonymous reader writes "A U.S. federal jury found that Microsoft Corp. infringed audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages, Microsoft said Thursday. The news comes after reports that U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed doubts about whether Microsoft Corp. should be liable for infringing AT&T Inc. patents in Windows software sold overseas."

Re:Which way will /. go?

[TheRaven64]

In the other software patents article, I pointed out that MS had lost around a billion dollars to software patents last year. Looks like they're well ahead of that this year already.

Anyone still want to claim that it makes sense for MS to be in favour of software patents?

Microsoft and the Law

[Macka]

What we have learned to date is that Microsoft will never have to pay anything like this kind of penalty. Even if they are guilty, they have already demonstrated their ability to heap appeal on top of appeal until many years from now, technology advancements will have moved the goal posts, effectively rendering the original claim irrelevant.

Their mastery of the legal system is so complete that were Eliot Ness alive today, Microsoft would be the principal nemesis in The Untouchables 2.

It's not over yet

[Anonymous Coward]

MS still has a number of appeals. Most importantly, the Federal Circuit has a 30-40% reversal rate in patent claim construction cases. It's too early to say that MS will pay.

Re:Microsoft argues that source code isn't patenta

[Anonymous Coward]

Full transcript [supremecourtus.gov].

Re:Which way will /. go?

[Tim Browse]

The problem is, of course, is that Microsoft has *never* used patents offensively.

You and other slashdot posters can keep saying that, but that doesn't make it true. [advogato.org]

Re:Which way will /. go?

[Speare]

Another case where Microsoft used patents offensively: FAT drive formatting and Long Filename FAT extensions. http://www.dpreview.com/news/0312/03120403microsof tisfat.asp [dpreview.com] Doesn't seem so defensive here.

Re:Which way will /. go?

[Paradise Pete]

$1.5 billion is a lot of money, even for Microsoft

Yup. Based on last year's gross profit they're going to have to save up for almost 15 days to pay that off. That's gotta hurt. That's like a whole paycheck right down the drain.

Are Microsoft customers protected from Lucent now?

[Anonymous Coward]

You were joking; but that's exactly the same kind of non-indemnification that Microsoft sells its customers:

It's very likely that now Microsoft has a license to use MP3 internally; but no right to sublicense it to end users who may still be liable.

If you think I'm kidding, they've done it before:
    http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/4306 7 [oreillynet.com]

Re:Forget about the evilness of MS for a moment...

[Phroggy]

This sounds like another reason we should hop on the Open Source file formats. With this ruling, you can't even pay the man for licensing, lest there be another "submarine license" for more money. Man, who wants to make MP3 encoders now?

Doesn't matter. Opening the source code won't protect you from submarine patents. Ogg Vorbis might be covered by a patent, that the people who created Ogg Vorbis aren't even aware of, and whoever owns that patent could sue you for infringement, and win.

Software patents are a huge problem.