Federal courts reinstate Alcatel-Lucent lawsuit

A federal judge has reinstated one of two dismissed patent disputes against Microsoft and Dell from French-American telecommunications partnership Alcatel-Lucent. CNN Money writes that the San Diego district court made an error when deciding the definition of a "terminal device", so the case is being presented again to the federal court system. The dispute is situated over a communication protocol that allows a computer and a device to exchange information.

The second patent dispute, involving the removal of extraneous pitch information from speech, in order to apply optimized compression, was left inactive.

The lawsuit is one of several from Alcatel-Lucent, with the company having recently won $368 million in a dispute with Microsoft over the use of touch screen technology.

Filed under: industry
Other story tags: Microsoft, Dell, lawsuit, patent, Alcatel-Lucent