Microsoft’s software bundling may suffer soon from the law of unintended consequences

There is an interesting development in the Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft damages trial.  Recall that a jury in San Diego federal court found Microsoft guilty of infringement, but an appeals court rejected the $358M damages award as lacking evidentiary support.

Charles River VP Raymond Sims testified this week that a lump sum payment of between $65M and $75M would be a “reasonable and fair assessment,” stating the infringing technology “is pervasive throughout the [Outlook] product” and that “the majority of Office users rely on Outlook, Word or Excel on a daily basis in their jobs.”

Microsoft argued that Sims’ valuation methodology produced errors because only Outlook uses the technology, which is true. However, Alcatel-Lucent countered with the obvious: Microsoft does not sell Outlook on its own; it’s available only when bundled with other software.