A US judge has ruled that AWS must pay up to $525 million (€490 million) to tech company Kove.
In 2018, Kove sued AWS, claiming that its Amazon S3 storage service and database service, DynamoDB, infringed three patents. These patents enabled “hyperscalable distributed cloud storage,” years before the cloud took hold. This claim by Kove was recognized by MIT Technology Review, which named distributed storage based on hash tables as one of the ten most important emerging technologies that would change the world. MIT Technology Review made this recognition five years after the Kove patent was first filed.
According to Kove, the three technology patents in question are essential for AWS to “store and retrieve massive amounts of data.” As a result, Amazon’s cloud branch has benefited from Kove’s original innovations. The fine could reach $525 million. Thanks in part to S3, AWS was able to grow into the world’s largest cloud provider.
Rights
The U.S. judge goes along with Kove’s allegations and sees that the storage designs were used as the foundation for the cloud platform. Courtland Reichman, Kove’s lead attorney, reacted with delight. It is “a testament to the power of innovation and the importance of protecting IP (intellectual property) rights for start-up companies against tech giants.”
Amazon disagrees with the judge’s decision and plans to appeal. In response, an AWS spokesperson informed ITPro that it is considering the jury that “also acknowledged that AWS did not wilfully infringe on patents.”
Earlier, Kove also sued Google for infringing the same three patents. The lawsuit against Google is still pending.
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