Lucent Sues Microsoft Over Xbox 360

Lucent sued Microsoft on Wednesday over technologies within the Xbox 360 that allegedly infringe on patents held by the company. The suit was filed with the U.S. District Court in Sand Diego, Calif., on March 28, asking for an injunction and monetary damages.

The patent in question is titled "Adaptive Coding and Decoding of Frames and Fields of Video," and revolves around MPEG-2 video technology. Microsoft acknowledged that it had received a copy of the lawsuit, but declined further comment.

Lucent had originally sued Gateway and Dell over the patent in 2003, however the two companies asked for assistance from Microsoft as the technologies were included in the Redmond company's products. Microsoft filed a declaratory judgment complaint in response.

The patent was thrown out in August 2005 over typographical errors, but Lucent then filed a revision to the patent that specified it covered digital video. This allowed Lucent to sue Microsoft directly, now accusing the company that the technologies were included within the Xbox 360 gaming console.

The company claims that the "out of the box" MPEG-2 decoding clearly infringes on Lucent's patents, and asked for a jury trial in addition to an injunction against unauthorized use of its technology. Lucent is also seeking unspecified damages.