Jury says Alcatel-Lucent didn't infringe on Microsoft patents

Okay, so remember two months ago when a jury in the District Court for the Southern District of California ruled that Microsoft had infringed two Alacatel-Lucent patents and that MS owed A-L some $367M? Well, a different jury in the same court today ruled that Alcatel-Lucent didn't infringe on four patents that Microsoft was crying over, that one of Microsoft's video-encoding patents is invalid, and the Microsoft didn't infringe on another Alcatel-Lucent patent. Got all that? Yeah, it's confusing, in an extraordinarly dull sort of way -- and it's just the latest twist and turn in this case, which has been going on since 2006 and features around 10 hotly-disputed patents. Don't worry, though, the good times don't appear to be ending soon: there's an appeal of that first decision coming up, and you know we'll be there sound asleep to let you know what happens.