It's no secret that Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft have a long and somewhat litigious relationship, but today the two companies are letting bygones be bygones. CNET is reporting that A-L and MS have reached a "confidential settlement" in a patent dispute dating all the way back to 2002. Originally targeting Dell and Gateway, then-Alcatel alleged that information entry techniques used by Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Money and Windows Mobile violated a portion of its patent portfolio. Microsoft stepped in on the OEMs' behalf,
