On Thursday in San Diego, U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster dismissed all of Alcatel-Lucent"s patent claims against Microsoft Corporation over technology that converts speech into text, meaning that the jury trial set to begin on March 19 will not take place. A week ago a jury found that the world"s largest software maker infringed on audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and ordered the company to pay $1.52 billion in damages, the largest amount ever in a U.S. patent case.
Alcatel-Lucent said it plans to appeal the ruling. "We"ve made strong arguments supporting our view. We"re comfortable with our chances of success," said Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Joan Campion. Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent are locked in a number of patent disputes including a suit over the video-coding technology in Microsoft"s Xbox 360 video game console. "This ruling reaffirms our confidence that once there"s judicial review of these complex patent cases, these Alcatel-Lucent claims ultimately won"t stand up," said Tom Burt, Microsoft"s deputy general counsel.