Lucent Technologies patent number 5,227,878 has long been a thorn in Microsoft's side. It features "adaptive coding and decoding of frames and fields of video," in relation to MPEG 2 video content. Lucent's been trying to get a hunk of change out of Microsoft for years, but their last bout three years ago over the same patent ended in a triumph for Microsoft — they convinced the judge to throw out the case because of a typo in the lawsuit. Got to love the justice system.

Anyway, Lucent's suing Microsoft again, this time over the MPEG 2 decoder in the 360. Lucent apparently ordered Microsoft to cease-and-desist selling 360's, which Microsoft proceeded to laugh off.

In other words, another frivolous lawsuit from a company trying to milk money out of an overly vague patent they slipped through. The sooner we nuke the entire patent system to the ground and put together something sensible, the better. Considering the fact that 70% of your genetic material is now patented, it's way past time to dose the US Patent Office with a few hundred mils of common sense.

Lucent Sues Microsoft in XBox 360 Patent Clash [RegHardware]