Justices to hear AT&T; case against Microsoft

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Microsoft Corp. should have to pay damages overseas for infringing a speech recognition software patent owned by AT&T; Inc.

The high court granted Microsoft’s petition to review an appeals court ruling that held that AT&T; could seek royalties based on the foreign manufacture and sale of infringing software products.

The case raises “the question of how far downstream you can go in capturing damages in the chain of commerce,” said Stephen Maebius, a patent lawyer with Foley & Lardner.

At issue is a ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that Microsoft was liable for the unauthorized distribution of codec technology, used to compress speech signals into data, in copies of Windows overseas.