Alcatel-Lucent

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Alcatel-Lucent
Type	Public (Euronext: ALU, NYSE: ALU, TYO: 6687 )
Founded	Alsace, France (1898)
Headquarters	Paris, France
Key people	Patricia Russo, CEO and Serge Tchuruk, chairman
Industry	telecommunications
Products	provides hardware, software and services to telecommunications service providers and enterprises
Revenue	21 Billion EUR (2005) (combined from Alcatel and Lucent Technologies)[1]
Employees	88,000 (2005)
Website	www.alcatel-lucent.com

Alcatel-Lucent is a multinational company that provides hardware, software, and services to telecommunications service providers and enterprises all over the globe. The company is incorporated in France, and has its executive offices in Paris and its North American regional executive offices in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The company does business in 132 countries, with almost equal sales distribution coming from both its European and North American regions, and an additional third of its channel located elsewhere in the world. Alcatel-Lucent was formed after the merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies on December 1, 2006.^[2]

Contents 1 History 1.1 History of Alcatel 1.2 History of Lucent 1.3 Merger 2 Lawsuits 2.1 Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft 2.2 Alcatel Intellectual Property Lawsuits 3 Corporate Image 4 References 5 External links

[edit] History

[edit] History of Alcatel

Headquartered in Paris (France), rue de la Boétie, with significant operations in and around Paris, Alcatel has a long history beginning in 1898 with the founding of Compagnie Générale d'Electricité (CGE). The original home of the company was the Alsace region and it still maintains R&D operations in the Strasbourg area. The current name, "Alcatel", comes from the acquisition in 1968 of Société Alsacienne de Constructions Atomiques, de Télécommunications et d' Electronique.

In 1991 CGE changed its name to Alcatel Alsthom, and in 1998 to Alcatel [3].

There were a number of mergers and acquisitions, as well as divestments since 1898. To understand the current company and its focus on telecommunications, the most important were the acquisition of the European telecommunications activities of ITT in 1986. The combined companies were called Alcatel Alsthom. Alcatel maintains significant R&D presence in France (Paris region, Brittany, South of France), Antwerp (Belgium), at the former ITT operations there (Bell Telephone), in Stuttgart (Germany), in Italy (Vimercate, Genoa, Rieti,Trieste, Battipaglia), in India (Gurgaon, NOIDA and Chennai), since 2000 in Shanghai (China) and since 2005 in Saint-Petersburg (Russia).

Since 1990, various North American companies were acquired – Spatial Wireless, Rockwell Technologies, DSC Communications, Xylan, Packet Engines, Assured Access, Newbridge, iMagicTV, TiMetra, and eDial – giving Alcatel a strong U.S. and Canadian presence. Alcatel has its North American headquarters in Plano, Texas, and R&D operations in Ottawa, Ontario; Mountain View, California; Petaluma, California; Saint John, New Brunswick; Calabasas, California and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Earlier this year, Alcatel setup a new joint venture with TCL of China forming a new mobile business, TCL and Alcatel Mobile Phones Limited (TAMP).

[edit] History of Lucent

One of the primary reasons AT&T chose to spin off its equipment manufacturing business was to permit it to profit from sales to competing telecommunications providers; these customers had previously shown reluctance at purchasing from a direct competitor. Bell Labs brought prestige to the new company, as well as the revenue from thousands of patents.

At the time of its spinoff, Lucent was placed under the leadership of Henry Schacht, who was brought in to oversee its transition from an arm of AT&T into an independent corporation. Richard McGinn succeeded Schacht as CEO in 1997. Lucent became a "darling" stock of the investment community in the late 1990s, rising from a split adjusted spin-off price of $7.56/share to a high of $84. However, on January 6, 2000, Lucent made the first of a string of announcements that it had missed its quarterly estimates, and when it was later revealed that it had used dubious accounting and sales practices to generate some of its earlier quarterly numbers, Lucent fell from grace. By October, 2002, when its stock price bottomed at 55 cents per share, Henry Schacht had been brought back on an interim basis to replace McGinn.[4]

In 1999, Lucent acquired Ascend Communications, an Alameda, California-based manufacturer of communications equipment for US$24 billon. Lucent held discussions to acquire Juniper Networks but decided instead to build its own routers internally. In April of 2000, Lucent sold its Consumer Products unit to VTech & Consumer Phone Services. In October of 2000, Lucent spun-off its Business Systems arm into Avaya, Inc., and in June, 2002, it spun off its microelectronics division into Agere Systems.

In 2002, Lucent began making significant cuts to the health care and retirement benefits of many of its 125,000 retirees. Although Lucent contends these and future cuts are necessary for its survival, they have nevertheless spawned several lawsuits and generated a continuing flow of negative publicity in the news media.

Today, Lucent has 30,500 employees, down from about 165,000 employees at its zenith. Lucent is active in the areas of telephone switching, optical, data and wireless networking. Patricia Russo currently heads the company, succeeding Schacht who remains on the Board of Directors.

[edit] Merger

On April 2, 2006, Alcatel announced a merger with its U.S. competitor, Lucent. The combined company, Alcatel-Lucent, was expected to have revenues of approximately $25 billion U.S. based on 2005 calendar results. [5]

The merger was completed on December 1st, 2006. Headquarters will remain in Paris. North America HQ will be Murray Hill, NJ.

[edit] Lawsuits

[edit] Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft

Main article: Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft

Alcatel-Lucent claims ownership of several patents relating to MP3 encoding and compression technologies. In November 2006, (prior to the companies' merger) Alcatel filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging infringement of seven of its patents relating to MP3 audio technology used in Microsoft Windows operating systems. On February 22, 2007, a San Diego court upheld the suit, and awarded Alcatel-Lucent a record-breaking $1.52 billion in damages. Microsoft has said it will appeal the verdict, maintaining that the federal jury's decision is "unsupported by the law or facts^[3]", since Microsoft had already paid $16m to license the technology from Fraunhofer IIS which, it claims, is "the industry-recognized rightful licensor".^[4]

[edit] Alcatel Intellectual Property Lawsuits

Alcatel USA, formerly DSC Communications Corporation, was an extremely litigious company during the 1990s under the direction of former CEO James L. Donald and former General Council George Brunt. These lawsuits brought Alcatel hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements. Notable actions include:

• DSC Communications v. Next Level Communications (ND Tex. 1995)
• DSC Communications v. Advanced Fibre Communications (ED Tex. 1996) See DSC vs. Advanced Fiber Trade secrets case
• DSC Communications v. Pulse Communications, Inc. (ED Va. 1997) See DSC vs. Pulsecom All DSC claims and Pulsecom counterclaims were ultimately dismissed.
• DSC Communications v. DGI Communications, Inc. (ND Tex. 1997) See DSC vs. DGI Technologies DSC obtained injunction against DGI, however, DGI ultimately won right to manufacture compatible PC boards.
• DSC Communications Corp. v. Reliance Technology Communications (Reltec), (Collin Co. Tex. 1998)
• Alcatel vs. Samsung Trade secrets case. Prior DSC employees hired by Samsung were individually sued. Baker Botts represented Alcatel, Akin Gump represented Samsung. Many former Alcatel employees did not know each other prior to working at Samsung, but Alcatel claimed Samsung "stole a team of engineers".
• Alcatel vs. Cisco Systems Cisco ultimately prevailed at The Hague. See: Alcatel vs. Cisco Systems
• Alcatel vs. Evan Brown - Alcatel claims ownership of undocumented idea in employee's brain. Texas Courts affirmed right of employers in Texas to force employee disclosure of ideas. State District Judge Curt Henderson allegedly ruled in favor of Alcatel on all issues.

[edit] Corporate Image

The corporate image and brand image of the company was designed by Euro RSCG.^[5]

It vaguely represents A and L which stand for Alcatel and Lucent and also symbolizes infinity. According to their website [6], "It symbolizes infinity. It implies movement. Its colour combines the stability of blue with the energy of red".

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Alcatel-Lucent company website
• Alcatel-Lucent Company Summary from Yahoo

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