A US federal court ruled that AWS must pay up to $525 million in damages to technology company Kove for infringing cloud storage patents.
According court documentsKove alleged that two AWS products, Amazon S3 storage and DynamoDB database service, infringed three of Kove's patents.
Kove originally sued Amazon over this claim in 2018.and the company claims that it paved the way for high-end cloud storage systems long before the advent of cloud computing as it stands today.
“As the amount of data stored in the cloud grew exponentially, there needed to be a way to store and locate it that was more dynamic and adaptable, otherwise the system could not be limited in size,” said the Kove CEO John Overton at the conference. time.
Kove's original complaint stated that the popularity of AWS cloud storage systems depended on removing this limitation.
The company alleged that AWS benefited from Kove's original innovations, allowing the hyperscaler to dominate the cloud space using its data storage designs as a foundation on which to build.
Jurors concluded that AWS was guilty of infringing US patent law through the operation of its cloud services, and the court found that there had been three separate violations of Kove's proprietary rights.
AWS's counterclaims and claims of non-infringement, invalidity, unpatentability, and unenforceability were all “dismissed with prejudice” by the jury.
Although there was some respite for AWS in that the violations were not deemed “intentional,” the company still received a hefty fine.
AWS plans to challenge the ruling
The cloud computing giant, however, disagrees with the court's ruling that it violated patent rights and has said ITPro who intends to appeal the sentence.
“We do not agree with the ruling and we intend to appeal. “We thank the jury, which also recognized that AWS did not intentionally infringe patents,” an AWS spokesperson said. ITPro.
In contrast, Kove's lead attorney, Courtland Reichman, called the verdict “a testament to the power of innovation and the importance of protecting the intellectual property (IP) rights of startups against tech giants.” according Reuters.
Kove is also seeking similar damages in a pending lawsuit against Google that began in 2023.
