AWS forced to pay out millions in major patent dispute

Digital clouds against a blue background.

(Image credit: Shutterstock / Blackboard)

A US jury has ruled Amazon Web Services (AWS) willingly infringed on two patents, and must now pay $30.5 million for violating the patent owner's rights in computer networking and broadcasting technology.

The offending technologies were AWS’s Cloudfront content delivery network and Virtual Private Cloud virtual network - which infringed on the patents originally owned by Boeing, but obtained by Acceleration Bay.

The two patents in this case are said to involve methods of streamlining data delivery across a network. Without getting too technical, the technologies allow data to be sent from peer to peer and flow around slow or broken connections by forming a network.

Assertion entity

Acceleration Bay describes itself as an ‘Incubator & Investor’, and recently won a separate patent trial against Activision, in which the video game developer was ordered to pay $23.4 million.

The final court’s judgement in the AWS case will come soon, but the payout could yet triple, due to the fact that Amazon 'willfully' breached the patents. AWS cloud services reportedly brings in around $9 billion operating profit per quarter - which is around 62% of Amazon’s total, so it probably won’t be hit too hard by the charges.

This isn’t the first time AWS has faced opposition with patented technology, having had to pay $525 million in damages earlier in 2024 after losing a cloud storage patent case.

The tech giant has also had a long-running spat with Nokia, with both firms bringing forward patent lawsuits against each other in recent years - most recently, in August 2024, AWS accused Nokia of over a dozen infringements for cloud computing technologies.

Since AWS is a dominant player in the cloud storage game, naturally it controls a lot of the technologies involved, which it claimed Nokia was using without permission.

Via The Register

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Ellen has been writing for almost four years, with a focus on post-COVID policy whilst studying for BA Politics and International Relations at the University of Cardiff, followed by an MA in Political Communication. Before joining TechRadar Pro as a Junior Writer, she worked for Future Publishing’s MVC content team, working with merchants and retailers to upload content.