Hip Hop Forum

French telecommunications company Alcatel has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Seven patents are at issue in the complaint, which are listed below:
* 6,339,830 and 6,874,090, "Deterministic User Authentication Service for Communication Network"
* 6,661,799, "Method And Apparatus for Facilitating Peer-to-Peer Application Communication"
* 6,823,390, "Method Of Setting Up Data Communication With A Communication Means And Furthermore Program Modules And Means Therefor"
* 6,112,226, "Method And Apparatus For Concurrently Encoding And Tagging Digital Information For Allowing Non-Sequential Access During Playback"
* 5,864,682 and 5,659,539, "Method and Apparatus for Frame Accurate Access of Digital Audio-Visual Information."

The patents outline methods in processing digital video, communications software and online authentication - all of which seem quite relevant to the just launched Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

This legal quibble may also stem from a Lucent and Microsoft patent war that started in 2003, and was recently revitalized over Xbox 360 video encoding, which Microsoft eventually won. Alcatel acquired Lucent earlier this year, absorbing its entire patent portfolio with it.