Microsoft Corp. does not have to pay $1.53 billion in damages awarded to Lucent Technologies in a dispute over two patents for compressing digital music into MP3 format, the Federal Circuit ruled. The court affirmed U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster's decision to throw out a jury's verdict against the world's largest software maker.

In February 2007 the San Diego jury ruled that Microsoft's Windows Media Player infringed on Lucent's patents. Brewster tossed the verdict in August 2007, finding that the jury had improperly used the value of the entire computer as the royalty base.

The Federal Circuit held that Microsoft had not infringed one of the two patents, and that Lucent lacked standing to sue Microsoft over the second patent.