Microsoft loses $367 million patent case

SAN DIEGO, April 5 (UPI) -- A federal jury in San Diego has ordered Microsoft Corp. to pay $367 million in damages to Alcatel-Lucent for patent infringement, Microsoft said.

The case, which Microsoft says it will appeal, is related to user interface technology, MarketWatch reported.

The jury Friday found that while Microsoft did not infringe on the video-coding patent, the Redmond, Wash.-based company did infringe the two user interface patents.

Paris-headquartered Alcatel-Lucent had been seeking $1.75 billion in damages in U.S. District Court in San Diego. The case originated in 2003, MarketWatch said.

As a part of the case decided last year, Microsoft was ordered to pay $1.5 billion for infringing Alcatel-Lucent patents related to MP3 technology, but a judge later reversed that decision.

"We feel confident the verdicts will be overturned, just as the court overturned a verdict last year by a San Diego jury in Alcatel-Lucent's favor in a dispute with Microsoft concerning widely used MP3 technology," Microsoft deputy general counsel Tom Burt said in a statement.