 The damages award was reversed on appeal in September 2009, and the case was returned for a separate trial on the amount of damages.The dispute between Microsoft and Lucent (and later Alcatel-Lucent) began in 2003 when Lucent Technologies (merged with Alcatel in 2006) filed suit against Gateway and Dell in U.S. District Court, San Diego, California.Lucent claimed in this first San Diego case that Dell and Gateway had violated patents on MP3-related technologies developed by Bell Labs, a division of predecessor company American Telephone & Telegraph.