We all know that businesses that use MP3 encoding for commercial purposes have to pay a licence fee to Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the owners of the MP3 patent. Yesterday, a US court awarded Alcatel-Lucent SA one and a half billion American dollars in damages to be paid by Microsoft for MP3 patent violation.

Associated Press takes up the story.

See the vorbis.com FAQ for some of the many reasons why I prefer Ogg Vorbis to MP3, WMA, RA, Quicktime or any other proprietary audio format.