Ouch: Amazon.com hit with more than eight patent suits in 55 days

Amazon.com’s corporate lawyers are going to be pretty busy in the coming weeks. According to the company’s quarterly report released today, the online retailer has been named in more than eight patent infringement lawsuits since the start of September.

Patent suits are not unusual for big technology companies like Amazon, and as we’ve pointed out in the past the U.S. patent system is in need of some serious reform. But the sheer number of suits against the Seattle online retailer — alleging infringement in everything from the Kindle to Amazon Web Services — is pretty mind-boggling. (By comparison, according to the SEC filing, Amazon faced just three patent suits last year).

So, who is suing Amazon and over what?

Here’s a look at each of the cases as laid out in the quarterly report. As you’ll see, in each instance below, Amazon disputes the allegations and plans to “vigorously defend” itself.

1. In September 2011, Parallel Iron, LLC, filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The complaint alleges, among other things, that certain AWS file storage systems that include a Hadoop Distributed File System infringe a patent owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover “Methods and Systems for a Storage System With a Program-Controlled Switch for Routing Data” (U.S. Patent No. 7,415,565), and seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
2. In September 2011, Lochner Technologies, LLC, filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that by offering products used for desktop virtualization or cloud computing solutions that provide virtual desktop environments Amazon infringes a patent owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover a “Modular Computer System” (U.S. Patent No. 7,035,598), and seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
3. In September 2011, Semiconductor Ideas to the Market BV filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that by offering products including our Kindle e-reader that employ receiver technology designed to diminish signal leakage Amazon infringes two patents owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover a “Receiver Comprising A Digitally Controlled Capacitor Bank” (U.S. Patent No. 7,299,018) and a “Communication Device” (U.S. Patent No. 7,072,614), and seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
4. In September 2011, Droplets, Inc. filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that by offering web applications and software Amazon infringes two patents owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover a “System and Method for Delivering a Graphical User Interface of Remote Applications Over a Thin Client” (U.S. Patent No. 6,687,745) and a “System and Method for Delivering Remotely Stored Graphics and Information” (U.S. Patent No. 7,502,838), and seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
5. In September 2011, Execware, LLC filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The complaint alleges, among other things, that by rapidly formatting and reformatting tabular displays of records, such as product listings on our websites, Amazon infringes a patent owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover an “Integrated Dialog Box for Rapidly Altering Presentation of Parametric Text Data Objects on a Computer Display” (U.S. Patent No. 6,216,139), and seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
6. In September 2011, Select Retrieval, Inc. filed complaints against us and one of our subsidiaries for patent infringement in the United States District Courts for the District of Oregon and the District of Delaware. The complaints allege, among other things, that certain aspects of our websites’ technology infringe a patent owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover “Data Display Software with Actions and Links Integrated with Information” (U.S. Patent No. 6,128,617), and seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in these matters.
7. In September 2011, LVL Patent Group, LLC filed three complaints against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The complaints allege, among other things, that certain aspects of our technology, including our mobile applications, infringe four patents owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover a “Telephone/Transaction Entry Device and System for Entering Transaction Data into Databases” (U.S. Patent Nos. 5,805,676; 5,987,103; and 8,019,060) and a “Data Transaction Assembly Server” (U.S. Patent No. 6,044,382), and seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
8. In October 2011, Smartphone Technologies LLC filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that certain aspects of our Kindle devices infringe five patents owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover a “Power-Conserving Intuitive Device Discovery Technique In A Bluetooth Environment” (U.S. Patent No. 6,950,645); a “Handheld Computer System That Attempts To Establish An Alternative Network Link Upon Failing To Establish A Requested Network Link” (U.S. Patent No. 7,506,064); a “Method And Apparatus For Communicating Information Over Low Bandwidth Communications Networks” (U.S. Patent No. RE 40,459); a “Method For Controlling A Handheld Computer By Entering Commands Onto A Displayed Feature Of The Handheld Computer” (U.S. Patent No. 6,956,562); and a “System and Method For Displaying And Manipulating Multiple Calendars On A Personal Digital Assistant” (U.S. Patent No. 6,466,236). The complaint seeks monetary damages, costs, and interest. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.

Whether anything will come of this litigation is anyone’s guess, and Amazon itself says it can’t predict the impact of the suits on its business. But, as I noted earlier, the Amazon attorneys certainly will be busy this winter.