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A federal jury in San Diego this afternoon awarded $367.4 million to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute with Microsoft. It ranks among the biggest patent verdicts in U.S. history, but it could have been worse: Alcatel-Lucent had been seeking $1.75 billion.

Reporting from the courtroom, Bloomberg News notes that the judge, Marilyn L. Huff, referred to that fact in comments to the lawyers, after the jury had left: "It's kind of a mixed verdict -- everybody wins,'' she said, according to the Bloomberg report. "There's something for everybody.''

The dispute involved technologies used in various Microsoft programs. The jury found that Microsoft didn't infringe on an Alcatel-Lucent patent for video-encoding technologies. However, the jury found that the company did infringe on two other patents, related to user-interface technologies.

Microsoft says it plans to appeal. "We will move immediately to have the two verdicts against Microsoft overturned," said Tom Burt, deputy general counsel, in a statement issued by the company. "We feel confident the verdicts will be overturned, just as the court overturned a verdict last year by a San Diego jury in Alcatel-Lucent's favor in a dispute with Microsoft concerning widely used MP3 technology."

This case is one in a series of patent disputes between the two companies. They're expected to be back in court later this month over another collection of patents.