Alcatel-Lucent

Neither Apple nor fellow defendant LG Electronics infringed on patents held by Alcatel-Lucent, a Southern California jury said today.

A jury in a federal court in San Diego reached its decision following a two-week patent trial, Bloomberg notes.

Multimedia Patent Trust, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, sued the two companies in December 2010 for alleged infringement on three of its patents covering video technology. The matter went to trial late last month.

The lawsuit targeted Apple's portable iOS devices like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, along with computers such as MacBooks and iMacs -- effectively, anything that included Apple'… Read more

A California jury must once again decide whether Apple is infringing another company's patents.

Apple, along with fellow defendant LG Electronics, begin a trial today with Multimedia Patent Trust in a San Diego, Calif., court.

Multimedia Patent Trust, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, sued the two companies in December 2010 for alleged infringement on three of its patents covering video technology.

The lawsuit targets both Apple's portable iOS devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, along with computers such as MacBooks and iMacs -- effectively, anything that includes Apple's QuickTime video technology. For LG, it's nine … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Where do the largest telecommunications companies in the world want to be in in the future? In the cloud.

We've all heard this schtick before: Carriers don't want to be the purveyors of dumb pipes. Their equipment suppliers--namely, Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent--also don't want them to be dumb pipe operators. The reason is simple: There just isn't much money in being dumb.

Smart is the way to go.

But for telecommunications giants, what does it mean to be smart? For the CEOs of Deutsche Telekom, Alcatel Lucent, and Cisco Systems, who spoke as part of … Read more

Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent have settled their nearly 9-year-old patent dispute, two months after a federal judge ordered Microsoft to pay $26.3 million in damages to the telecommunications infrastructure company.

Yesterday, the companies asked U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff in San Diego to grant a joint motion ending all claims in the suit. A Bloomberg article notes that both sides agreed to bear their own costs, according to a court filing. No details were given about settlement terms.

"Microsoft and Lucent have entered into a confidential settlement to the satisfaction of both parties," a Microsoft spokeswoman said.… Read more

The race among tech giants to accumulate patents is often compared to stockpiling a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to an all-out war.

The way this cold war works, the analogy suggests, is that patent holders often negotiate something of a litigation cease-fire, agreeing to cross-license each others innovations rather than face a barrage of infringement cases in court. That's why Google, which has a scant patent portfolio to combat litigation from rivals, agreed to spend $12.5 billion in cash yesterday to acquire Motorola Mobility.

But there's a flaw in the analogy. In real cold wars, new … Read more

A federal jury in San Diego today ruled that Microsoft must pay $70 million in damages to telecommunications infrastructure maker Alcatel-Lucent, stemming from a patent infringement claim that dates back to 2003.

The patent, which was originally applied for by engineers at AT&T, covers a method of entering information into fields on a computer screen without using a keyboard. Lucent initially sued computer makers Gateway and Dell for infringing on the patent in 2002, with Microsoft intervening.

An earlier trial involving the same parties found Microsoft guilty of infringing on that patent in the company's Outlook e-mail … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--At the Mobile World Congress here, I hitched a ride in a 2011 Audi A8 demo equipped with Alcatel-Lucent 4G/LTE infrastructure.

The 2011 Audi A8 is typically equipped with an integrated 3G Wi-Fi hot spot to support its Google Earth navigation system and up to six device connections. But the 4G hot spot will give users even higher bandwidth for better telematics response and Internet access to support applications such as streaming media. Think live video conferencing from the backseat of the car, which is what we did.

Alcatel-Lucent demoed the 4G capability in the vehicle using LiveCast and Vidyo. As I rode around Barcelona in the back of the A8, I video-conferenced with an Alcatel team following us in another vehicle. Our demo was also broadcast to Alcatel's booth at Mobile World Congress.

This Audi connected to Alcatel's temporary 4G base station in a building about 1.5 miles away from us, and we witnessed speeds of up to 30Mbps. However, there were only a couple of users accessing that base station. In a commercial application, Alcatel says users can expect speeds around 5Mbps. That's a lot faster than the 400Kbps to 1.5Mbps you can expect on current 3G networks. … Read more

Telecommunications infrastructure maker Alcatel-Lucent announced this week new technology that will help wireless carriers expand their networks to keep up with the explosive growth in mobile data.

The company announced this week a new compact cell phone antenna system called lightRadio, which incorporates radio technology and base station technology in a single box. The entire system, which can fit on a lamp post, is a fraction of the size of today's cellular equipment. Current cellular networks require massive and power-hungry cell phone towers that house the antennas with a separate base station at the bottom of those towers that … Read more

AT&T has confirmed that it's working on a fix for the software glitch in its Alcatel-Lucent equipment. Reuters reported earlier today that the wireless carrier will issues the fix in the next two to three weeks.

The fix, which AT&T says is relevant for less than two percent of its customers, is expected to significantly boost upload speeds from as low as 100Kbps to as high as 1.7Mbps. Download speeds, which were not affected by the glitch, should not change.

AT&T first admitted the problem on July 7 after customers in select … Read more