When we heard about the $1.5 billion of damages awarded against Microsoft in favor of Alcatel Lucent over the MP3 patent, we very clearly said this would not stand, and now a US judge has struck down the penalty, and to some extent the entire verdict.
We said at the time that the case was flawed, that Alcatel didn’t in fact own MP3 patents, that the Fraunhofer Institute plus France Telecom, T’l’diffusion de France, Philips, Thomson and Institut fur Rundfunktechnik and Bayerische Rundfunkwerbung to name but a few all hold some sway over the technology.
The US judge this week said that the jury decision came against the clear weight of the evidence and that the way the award was calculated was excessive.
We don’t want to be rude to all Americans here, but there is a tendency for the man in the street in US jury trials not to care or believe in some foreign patents, held for instance in Europe, and to believe that all things are invented in the US. American Judges do not suffer from the same impressions.
As Microsoft has become more mature as a company, it has turned out to be fairly rigorous about behaving properly and licensing patents for a fair price, when offered by genuine technology sources, in this case from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.
Judge Rudi Brewster, of US District Court in San Diego, said that Microsoft’s Windows Media Player only infringes on one of the patents and that this one had been held by the Fraunhofer Institute and properly licensed.
Alcatel said that it may appeal the verdict, but without this decision MP3 as a format was doomed and Alcatel would have gone after a whole long list of companies if it had been allowed to stand.
Judge Brewster also said the jury had related damages to the number of installations of the technology, so every Windows based computer, without any evidence being given to suggest that the MP3 capability was a core reason for buying those PCs.