Amazon owes $525 million in cloud-storage patent battle: US Jury

Amazon loses patent case: A federal jury in Illinois has ruled that Amazon Web Services (AWS), the leading cloud-service provider, must pay $525 million to tech company Kove for breaching its patent rights in data-storage technology. The jury found AWS guilty of infringing three patents owned by Kove, which are crucial for Amazon's cloud-computing arm to manage vast amounts of data.

Amazon has expressed disagreement with the verdict and plans to challenge it through an appeal. Kove's legal team hailed the decision as a victory for innovation and the safeguarding of intellectual property rights, particularly for startups facing off against industry giants.

Cloud storage lawsuit

The lawsuit, filed by Kove in 2018, claimed that it pioneered technology for high-performance cloud storage long before the rise of cloud computing. Kove accused AWS of infringing its patents through services like Amazon S3 and DynamoDB. While the jury agreed that AWS violated all three patents, it did not find AWS guilty of wilful infringement.

AWS has refuted the allegations, arguing that the patents were invalid. Additionally, Kove filed a similar lawsuit against Google last year, which is still ongoing in Illinois.

(With Reuters Inputs)