RSSLucent Sues Microsoft Over Xbox 360
By Ed Oswald | Published April 6, 2006, 12:45 PM
Lucent sued Microsoft on Wednesday over technologies within the Xbox 360 that allegedly infringe on patents held by the company. The suit was filed with the U.S. District Court in Sand Diego, Calif., on March 28, asking for an injunction and monetary damages.
The patent in question is titled "Adaptive Coding and Decoding of Frames and Fields of Video," and revolves around MPEG-2 video technology. Microsoft acknowledged that it had received a copy of the lawsuit, but declined further comment.
Lucent had originally sued Gateway and Dell over the patent in 2003, however the two companies asked for assistance from Microsoft as the technologies were included in the Redmond company's products. Microsoft filed a declaratory judgment complaint in response.
The patent was thrown out in August 2005 over typographical errors, but Lucent then filed a revision to the patent that specified it covered digital video. This allowed Lucent to sue Microsoft directly, now accusing the company that the technologies were included within the Xbox 360 gaming console.
The company claims that the "out of the box" MPEG-2 decoding clearly infringes on Lucent's patents, and asked for a jury trial in addition to an injunction against unauthorized use of its technology. Lucent is also seeking unspecified damages.
Lucent is also looking for Microsoft to recall XBox360 due to the patent infringement!!
Wouldn't it be funny, as PS3 ships in Nov, Xbox360 gets recalled...
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|It will never be recalled - if anything, they'd just pay a license fee. But in reality, unless there is a quick payoff, this will be in the courts for years.
And I still haven't seen any official press relase from Sony on a Nov release.
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|I'm on the fence on this one, on the one hand i don't like how tech patents have been abused, but on the other hand i don't like MS.
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|Ever noticed that it's almost always the company in financial trouble or the one who has lost their market share that sues for patent infringement? How many lawsuits does Microsoft file regarding patent infringement, for example?
Lucent WinModem. That killed em. Now they need money to survive, and Microsoft is always the easiest target for such lawsuits.
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|You are joking right? Lucent Tecnologies are not in trouble. You do know they do more than make winmodem chipsets right? Idiot..
http://finance.yahoo.com...n&z=m&q=l&c=
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|Easy and lazy way to make money!
Patient something and wait until someone invent something.
2-3 years goes by, slap a lawsuit when the company has already made millions off of their invention and steal it from them, all legally!
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|another lawsuit? No way! not in the US
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|America - It's a free courtroom.
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|What the heck is Lucent trying to do.. MPEG-2 is not their technology..
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|**** lucent and **** microsoft if it were up to me id just make x box a grow light and have it help me grow pot ... id call it a potbox.
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|lol. I couldn't agree with ya more.
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|I dunno guys... this one is interesting. Does someone "own" mpeg-2? I'd be very interested to see a judge say no...
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|When is this shlt going to stop? This patent system need a reform now.
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|it's not the patent system that needs reform, those are licensing fees that must be paid, unless MS strictly uses a free or open source or their own format (wma/wmv).
You want to use something I create, you must follow licensing, that's that. Now, it's up to you on which format to use.
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|Have you seen the number of patent lawsuits these days??? Every day there's 10 new patent lawsuits...the patent system WILL be reformed in some way, trust me. This really is getting way out of hand.
I'm gonna patent the upper case letter A...pay my bills now thanks!
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|Hey, i already filed my patent for the uppercase letter A, B, and C. lol Boy, people owe me billions.
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|Yet more proof that the patent system is completely screwed up.
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|That and the fact that everyone really is interested in the easy money. Problem is, there's no real consequence in losing a suit, so I can sue you because your name "dopefish" has caused me serious mental distress.. What have I got to lose?
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|yeah, that is why the loser should pay.. Although, the threat of losing still wont slow people down..
They will deal with it when the time comes..
My biggest problem with lawsuits stems from the fact that there are truly viable lawsuits pending, and they are being held up by this stupid stuff.
companies with the deeper pockets get higher priority..
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|I'm getting tired of these lawsuits.
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|You and me both.
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|Both of you and me
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