Microsoft is celebrating after a judge in the United States overturned an earlier court decision which had ordered the software giant to pay $1.52 billion (£777 million) in damages to a French telecoms equipment firm in a parent infringement case.
The US district court judge ruled that damages awarded to Alcatel-Lucent by a San Diego jury earlier this year could not stand because Microsoft was not guilty of infringing two of its music patents.
Microsoft had been ordered to pay the company damages in an original verdict which ruled that software for its Windows Media Player infringed on two of Alcatel-Lucent's digital music patents.
Both patents cover technology used to convert audio files into a digital MP3 format, a popular method of converting music from a CD so that it can be stored and played on computers, portable music players and other gadgets.
In yesterday's ruling US district court judge Rudi Brewster overturned the original decision, declaring that Microsoft had not in fact breached patent laws.
The judge stressed that Microsoft's software did not infringe one of the patents in question and that it was also in the clear in regard to a second patent because it had already paid Alcatel-Lucent's German business partner Fraunhofer $16 million (£8 million) for rights to use the technology.
Microsoft has welcomed the ruling as a "victory for consumers" and a "triumph for common sense" in regard to the patent system.
But Alcatel-Lucent has vowed to appeal against the decision, with a spokeswoman for the company describing the reversal of the original judgement against Microsoft as "shocking and disturbing".
Digg 
Delicious 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Google 
Technorati 
Netvouz