Amazon Web Services ordered to pay $525 million for patent infringement

An Illinois jury said on Wednesday that Amazon Web Services (AWS), the big cloud-service group owned by Amazon, must pay a tech firm named Kove $525 million.

This is because they broke Kove's rights to patents on how to store data. The jury found that AWS used three of Kove's key patents without permission.

These patents help AWS store and get big amounts of data from the cloud. Kove, from Illinois, said its tech was key in letting AWS keep lots of data well.

This win is big for Kove in its fight over who came up with certain tech ideas.

Amazon said it didn't agree with the jury's choice and plans to fight the decision.

An Amazon person said, "The company disagrees with the verdict and intends to appeal."

This fight shows the ongoing clash between smaller firms and big industry names over who has the rights to new tech.

Kove's main lawyer, Courtland Reichman, praised the decision, saying it shows how important it is for new companies to protect their tech ideas from big businesses.

The fight started in 2018 when Kove took Amazon to court in Illinois. Kove said it had made tech for fast cloud storage way before cloud computing became big.

The lawsuit claimed AWS' services, like Amazon S3 storage and DynamoDB database, used Kove's patented ideas.

The jury agreed with Kove, saying AWS broke all three patents. However, they didn't think AWS did it on purpose.

Even though AWS said Kove's patents shouldn't count, the jury backed Kove.

This case shows how key it is for smaller companies to protect their ideas.

Also, Kove is suing Google in Illinois for a similar reason in another case that's still going on.

This highlights the bigger issue of patent fights in the tech world.