Judge reinstates Alcatel-Lucent case
The telecom equipment titan claims Microsoft and Dell infringed on its patents.
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| Alcatel-Lucent initially sued Gateway and Dell in 2003 over a series of patents. |
NEW YORK (Dow Jones/AP) -- A federal appeals court on Thursday reinstated one of two patent cases tossed out last year in the ongoing user-interface technology dispute pitting Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc.
The appeals court said the San Diego district court erred in its determination of a "terminal device," and remanded the formerly dismissed case back to the court for further proceedings. The technology covered by the patent in that matter is a communications protocol that aids information exchange between a host processor computer and a terminal device, like a portable computer or smartphone.
Dismissal of the second patent case, which concerns methods used to compress speech by removing redundant pitch information, was backed by the appeals court.
The patents asserted against Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) are among several being litigated by the companies in an ongoing dispute that originated in 2003. In early April, a jury ordered Microsoft to pay $367.4 million in damages to Alcatel-Lucent (ALU); Microsoft said it would appeal. The most high-profile decision stemming from the imbroglio was handed down last year, when Microsoft was ordered to pay $1.5 billion for infringing Alcatel-Lucent patents related to MP3 technology. That decision was later reversed.
Gateway and Dell were initially sued by Alcatel-Lucent over a series of patents in 2003. Microsoft subsequently stepped in on the defendants' behalf. Alcatel-Lucent had claimed computers made by Gateway and Dell, using Microsoft programs including Outlook and Quicken, infringed on its patents. 
