Microsoft loses Fraunhofer lawsuit

bunder writes: "The Associated Press SEATTLE (Feb 24, 2007) A U.S. federal jury's ruling that Microsoft infringed on two MP3 patents and must pay $1.52- billion US in damages could turn into a major sour note for other technology companies in the digital music business. The victory for France's Alcatel-Lucent SA could embolden the telecommunications equipment maker to pursue claims — or seek royalties — from other companies that it believes infringe on the technology, experts said yesterday. The two patents in question cover the encoding and decoding of audio into the digital MP3 format — a popular way to convert music from a CD into a lightweight file on a personal computer and vice versa. Microsoft said it paid for the technology from Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute, which licences it to hundreds of companies, including Apple Inc. and RealNetworks Inc. When the software maker decided to add MP3 decoding and encoding capabilities to its Windows Media Player, it paid Fraunhofer $16-million US for the relevant intellectual property licences and source code."