Quote:Microsoft loses biggest patent suit ever

New York (Agencies)
A US federal jury handed down the largest patent ruling in history, ordering Microsoft pay $1.52 billion in damages for the unauthorised use of digital music technology, Microsoft said on Thursday.

Microsoft said it plans to first ask the trial judge to knock down the ruling and will appeal if necessary. It said the verdict is unsupported by the law or the facts.

The San Diego jury said Microsoft infringed two Alcatel-Lucent MP3 patents related to the standard for playing music files on a computer. The infringements came in its Windows Media Player, including the latest version in the new Vista operating system.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, had claimed Alcatel- Lucent is demanding royalties already being paid to another inventor and that the patents are invalid.

Microsoft said it has already properly licensed the MP3 technology from a German company called Fraunhofer for $16 million.

"We are concerned that this decision opens the door for Alcatel-Lucent to pursue action against hundreds of other companies who purchased the rights to use MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, the industry-recognized rightful licensor," Tom Burt, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said in a statement.

Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Joan Campion declined to discuss details of the decision.

"We made strong arguments supporting our view and we are pleased with the court's decision," she said.

Microsoft and Alcatel are locked in a number of patent disputes including a suit over the video-decoding technology in Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console.