Judge Negates Record Verdict Against Microsoft
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The world’s largest software maker, Microsoft Corp., persuaded a judge to throw out a jury’s record $1.52 billion verdict in a landmark case over Alcatel-Lucent’s MP3 digital-music patents.
U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster in San Diego said today that the jury’s damage award couldn’t stand because one of the two patents wasn’t infringed. The second disputed patent was co-owned by a German research institute and Microsoft had a valid license, Brewster ruled.
The jury decided in February that Microsoft must pay $1.52 billion for violating Paris-based Alcatel’s rights to the inventions, the largest patent verdict in American history. The two sides argued in court in July over whether the verdict should stand.
