I don't know why this keeps happening so often lately, but at least in the last few months, Microsoft kept losing various lawsuits and being forced to pay various amounts to other companies for patent infringements, but the hardest hits came from the European Comission. Anyway, fortunately for the Redmond giant, today is not about the EC. Unfortunately, the amount they have to pay is a bit more than just pocket money, because a federal judge just ordered them to pay Alcatel-Lucent no less than half a billion dollars!