A US judge last night overturned a jury verdict ordering Microsoft to pay Alcatel-Lucent $1.5 billion for infringing on the French firm's patents.
US Senior District Court Judge Rudi Brewster, who is handling a legal appeal of the jury trial's outcome, issued a written ruling in favour of Microsoft and against Lucent, according to court documents.
Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith described the news as 'a victory for consumers of digital music and a triumph for common sense in the patent system'.
The trial, which ended in US District Court in the southern California city of San Diego in February, centred on MP3 audio technology used in the Windows Media Player software.
Alcatel-Lucent argued in court that technology used to encode and decode digital audio files in Media Player infringed on two of its patents.
Microsoft said that it had paid Munich-based licensing firm Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft $16m legally use the disputed MP3 technology.
In his ruling, Brewster concluded that the US software giant did not infringe on one of the patents and that Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft would need to join Alcatel-Lucent's infringement suit for it to be valid in court.
