Patent infringement: Amazon faces 500 million US dollar fine

A patent dispute between the company Kove and the tech group Amazon has been raging in the USA for some time. The focus is on Amazon’s cloud computing service AWS. The court case has now come to an end, which is likely to be anything but pleasing for Amazon.

Amazon threatened with 500 million in damages

The two companies have been arguing in a US court in the state of Illinois since 2018. The judge in charge has now reached a verdict and did not have good news to announce for Amazon. The tech company now has to pay a whopping 500 million US dollars. The reason for this is that the storage technology of Amazon Web Services (AWS) apparently has clear parallels to the methods developed by Kove years ago.

This means that not only Kove’s lawyers but also the court consider a patent infringement to have been proven. The Reuters news agency report also quotes the jurors. When the verdict was announced, they emphasized that the technology adapted by Kove was “essential” for AWS. However, the jury also agreed that Amazon had not deliberately infringed the patents.

The focus here is on Amazon’s S3 and DynamoDB storage technologies, among others. Meanwhile, the tech company is not at all sympathetic. Rather, Amazon is being combative and wants to defend itself. From the tech company’s point of view, the patents are simply ineffective, which is why there can be no question of any infringement. An appeal has already been lodged.

Another tech company in focus

For Kove itself, the ruling is certainly a welcome cash injection. However, it may not be the last grant the company receives from a tech company. Google, the next Silicon Valley giant, is already on the list of defendants. However, it will be some time before a decision is made on this matter.

Meanwhile, the patent dispute between Kove and Amazon will have no impact on AWS. After all, the patents have expired in the meantime anyway. However, the final amount of damages may well change. It is not uncommon in the USA for damages in patent disputes to be adjusted downwards in the course of appeal proceedings.