Microsoft fined $1.5B in patent suit

Digit Online

This is scary, very scary !!! Not even because the evil empire of Microsoft is involved, but because it's about MP3 encoding and decoding technology.

Pretty much everyone pays licenses to Fraunhofer who are the recognised body that collects royalties for MP3 patents, if the lawsuit sticks (and MS are appealing) then Alcatel-Lucent can attack every other MP3 licensee.