CHICAGO (CBS) — A federal jury in Chicago found that Amazon Web Services infringed three of the company's patents and awarded the Chicago-based technology company $525 million in damages. .
West Loop-based Cove IO is owned by Amazon Web Services, which is owned by CEO John Overton and fellow inventor Stephen Bailey, who met at the University of Chicago while earning their Ph.D. It was accused of infringing three patents.
Cove claims in its lawsuit that Overton and Bailey “developed breakthrough technology that enabled high-performance, hyperscalable, distributed 'cloud' storage years before the advent of the cloud.” ' he claimed.
The lawsuit says Cove's technology later “became essential to AWS as the amount of data stored on the cloud grew exponentially and cloud storage businesses faced limitations in their ability to store and retrieve large amounts of data.” '' he claimed.
Amazon Web Services provides cloud computing services used by several other major companies, including Netflix, Facebook, Disney, and Sony.
On Tuesday, a federal jury ruled that Amazon infringed Kove's patent, but not knowingly, meaning it did not know the patent existed. The jury awarded Korb $525 million in damages.
Kobe's lawyer, Renato Mariotti, said in a statement: “This judgment highlights the importance of protecting intellectual property rights. It is a testament to the importance of Kobe's invention. “We will continue to grow and succeed through technology.”
Amazon spokesman Duncan Neesham said the company plans to appeal the ruling.
“We are grateful that the jury found that AWS did not knowingly infringe any patents,” Neesham said.
The incident involved Amazon products DynamoDB and Simple Storage Service. Neesham said the ruling will not disrupt or change these services because the relevant patents have already expired.
Mr. Korb has filed a similar lawsuit against Google, alleging it infringes on the same patent. That lawsuit is still pending.
