The pendulum swings toward Microsoft in the Alcatel-Lucent IP battle

The intellectual property war which at one point had Microsoft owing Alcatel-Lucent a penalty of over $1.5 billion, may end up with the latter actually owing the former. First that penalty was reduced in light of new Supreme Court guidelines, and then last September an appeals court overturned the jury verdict, ruling in favor of Microsoft.

Yesterday, Microsoft was handed another victory, as first reported by my friend and colleague Liz Montalbano at PC World, with the US Patent and Trademark Office overturning the validity of two Alcatel-Lucent patents, concerning methods for how a user selects calendar entries from an onscreen menu. Microsoft had owed the France-based holder of the Bell Labs patent portfolio some $357.7 million, which has since accrued interest.

But should a federal court act on the USPTO's decision and throw out that verdict -- the last chunk of that billion-and-a-half -- all that may be left is the subject of Microsoft's counterclaim, for which it seeks a half-billion: a way to charge remote multimedia users for quality of service rather than for bytes downloaded. Whether Alcatel-Lucent would have any fight left in it to be willing to play defense, is doubtful.