Lucent has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft over the Xbox 360's use of MPEG-2 decoding. The firm claims that Microsoft's Xbox 360 violates a patent patent that details how video frames are compressed. Lucent is seeking an injunction, which - if granted - could put Xbox 360 sales on hold.
Lucent's patent battle against Microsoft goes back several years and began in 2003 when Lucent sued Dell and Gateway. In that suit, Lucent alleged that the included Microsoft operating system infringed on several video compression related patents, including patent 5,227,878. Dell and Gateway argued that they were merely resellers of the software and - because of prior indemnity agreements - asked Microsoft to step in.
Back then, Microsoft responded by filing a counter lawsuit against Lucent and asked the court to nullify a total of 13 Lucent patents. The judge dropped Microsoft's case after a typographical error was discovered in Lucent's patent 5,227,878. Lucent filed a correction with the USPTO and received the update patent in 2005. The approval provided the correction the patent the same legal weight as if the correction had been in place all along.
Microsoft has yet to respond to the new suit. Lucent did not say, whether the original suit against Dell and Gateway has been resolved.
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