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Jury sides with Apple, LG in Alcatel-Lucent patent suit

A San Diego jury says Apple and LG did not infringe on patents owned by Alcatel-Lucent's Multimedia Patent Trust.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn

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's QuickTime video technology. For LG, it was nine of its phones, which Multimedia Patent Trust claimed infringe on two of its patents with built-in video software and the use of a Qualcomm chip.

Per Bloomberg's report, Alcatel-Lucent sought $172.3 million in damages from Apple for royalties on its patents, with another $9.1 million from LG.

Multimedia Patent Trust is perhaps best known for its parent company, Alcatel-Lucent, which successfully sued Microsoft in 2007, landing a $1.5 billion jury verdict. That verdict was later overturned by a district court judge. The two companies reached a settlement in January that put an end to their nearly 9-year spat.

The win for Apple comes just hours after a separate, and unrelated, loss in court to MobileMediaover a trio of camera-phone technology patents.