AT&T wins round in patent case

A federal court has sided with AT&T over one aspect of a complex patent lawsuit it filed against Microsoft. U.S. District Judge William Pauley III ruled Monday that there was no evidence that AT&T concealed information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when applying for its speech compression patent.

AT&T alleges that its patent covers the G.723.1 speech codec, which was included in Microsoft's NetMeeting 2.0 conferencing software. In June 2001, AT&T sued Microsoft in the Southern District of New York, and the case has not gone to trial.