Well, for those who just love to see Microsoft in trouble.
[FONT size=5]Microsoft hit with $1.5B US patent penalty[/FONT]
Microsoft Corp. must pay $1.5 billion US for violating two patents connected with converting audio signals into the digital MP3 format, a U.S. jury ruled Thursday.
The federal jury in San Diego, Calif., said Microsoft must pay the damages to equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA.
"We think this verdict is completely unsupported by the law or the facts," Microsoft lawyer Tom Burt said in a statement. The company is expected to appeal.
Microsoft has put MP3 conversion technology into its Windows operating system, so the finding could affect the heart of its business.
Lucent, which was taken over by Alcatel in 2006, filed 15 claims involving MP3 encoding and decoding systems in 2003 against computer makers Dell Inc. and Gateway Inc.
Microsoft added itself as a defendant, saying the patents were closely related to Windows.
[FONT size=1]More: [/FONT][A href="vny!://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/02/22/microsoft-lucnet.html"][FONT size=1]vny!://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/02/22/microsoft-lucnet.html[/FONT][/A]