Tech Shout!

Networking giant Lucent is dragging software giant Microsoft to court, since the latter has breached a patent it holds. The patent, 5,227,878, was issued to Lucent on July 13th 1993 and called “Adaptive Coding and Decoding of Frames and Fields of Video”.

This is not the first time Lucent and Microsoft have met in court. Last time Lucent brought Microsoft to court, the judge declared, because of a typo in the patent, the claim was invalid. That forced Lucent to get a certificate from the US patent office

to correct the typo, which was issued at the end of October last year.

However, said Lucent in its filing at the end of March, Microsoft has breached this patent by releasing the Xbox 360 console, which has MPEG2 tech; it’s suspected that’s a violation of the Lucent patent.

When the judge made his ruling on the patent case with the typos last year, he stated that the “decision was without discrimination to Lucent starting separate action.”

And true to its words. It filed the action on the 28th of March in the southern district of California, San Diego.

Lucent alleges Microsoft has infringed its patent and told the firm so soon after the intro of the Xbox 360.

The firm wants a jury trial on the matter.