Amazon has filed a lawsuit against Nokia, accusing the Finnish telecomms giant of infringing on a dozen patents relating to cloud computing technology.
The lawsuit, initiated in the Delaware federal court earlier this week, Amazon alleges that Nokia unlawfully utilized technology developed by its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, to enhance its own cloud computing offerings.
Amazon claims Nokia has misappropriated AWS technology related to cloud infrastructure, security and performance.
Amazon sues Nokia over cloud computing parents
The complaint outlines Amazon’s history of cloud innovation, dating back to the early 2000s when the company started developing its cloud computing technology.
Amazon claims to have “democratiz[ed] access to computing infrastructure and software through its cloud-based, on-demand services model,” whereby previously businesses relied on expensive on-prem infrastructure.
Boasting more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies use AWS, Amazon says Nokia’s “new company strategy,” announced in 2020, six years after the company exited the mobile device market, “involve[s] leveraging Amazon’s innovative solutions, including Amazon’s patented technology, to address issues faced by cloud service providers.”
The company goes on to claim: “it was Amazon that pioneered in the cloud, and now Nokia is using Amazon’s patented cloud innovations without permission.”
The lawsuit details the 12 instances of patent infringement, including virtual machine configuration, network communication management and resource autoscaling.
The lawsuit comes in response to 13 legal proceedings filed by Nokia late last year in the US, Brazil, India, Germany, the UK and the EU relating to video patents.
Nokia said (via Reuters) it would “review these matters and defend ourselves vigorously in court.” An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.
A person familiar with the matter told TechRadar Pro that although Amazon claims that Nokia has been unwilling to accept fair market terms for its patented IP, the company hopes to come to a mutually agreeable resolution