Thursday, December 13, 2012, 05:11 pm

Apple and LG cleared of infringing on Alcatel-Lucent patents

By Mikey Campbell

A federal jury on Thursday found products made by Apple and LG do not infringe on video compression patents asserted by Alcatel-Lucent's Multimedia Patent Trust, bringing an end to the nearly two-year long case.


In the suit heard by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Alcatel-Lucent was seeking damages of $172.3 million in royalties from Apple's alleged infringement of three patents and $9.1 million from LG over two patents, reports Bloomberg. The suit took aim at various models in the iPhone, iPod, iPad and MacBook Pro product lines.

The trial was a direct result of Multimedia Patent Trust's initial 2010 complaint in which the Paris-based company claimed Apple and LG copied IP related to efficient data transmission tech used in video transmission.

According to Alcatel-Lucent lawyer Frederick Lorig, at least 33 other companies have paid over $190 million to license the patents, but the defense claimed it was already covered by an industry-wide "pay-as-you-go" pool. The jury sided with Apple and LG.

“We are very pleased with the verdict,” said Apple attorney Juanita Brooks.

Earlier on Thursday, Apple lost a separate case over screen rotation patents that belong to a non-practicing entity jointly owned by Sony and Nokia.