Amazon sues Nokia for violating cloud patents, without failing to recall past mistakes

Amazon filed a lawsuit against Nokia in the state of Delaware (USA), accusing the latter of violating a dozen patents related to cloud computing. As Reuters reports, the case file indicates that Nokia abused AWS technologies, using them in its own cloud solutions. A year ago, Nokia itself went to court with a request to hold Amazon accountable for violating patents on video streaming technologies.

Now Nokia has stated that it intends to study Amazon’s claims and actively defend its rights in court. Amazon claims that the Finnish company is using technologies it invented in the early 2000s without permission, and is asking the court to block the use of Nokia solutions that violate its patents, as well as to award monetary compensation.

Amazon says that since AWS was founded in 2006, the company has fundamentally transformed computing and communications. Before AWS, large-scale data-intensive computing relied primarily on companies’ om-premise server infrastructure. Amazon added that 14 years after the launch of AWS, Nokia announced a new strategy related to cloud computing by opening the Cloud and Network Services division.

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AWS says Nokia’s cloud solutions leverage Amazon’s intellectual property. Thus, Nokia CloudBand relies on proprietary mechanisms for configuring virtual machines, managing distributed application execution, automatically scaling resources, etc. And Nokia Nuage Networks violates patents related to managing communications in virtual networks and emulating physical network devices, complements DataCenter Dynamics.

Amazon made some barbs, saying in the lawsuit that Nokia’s failure to appreciate the importance of smartphones nearly drove the company into bankruptcy in 2013. The 186-page lawsuit painstakingly cites all instances of patent violations, citing Nokia’s marketing and technical materials about the company’s cloud services.

It is possible that mutual claims are related. The process initiated by Nokia against Amazon in October 2023 is still not completed. Amazon Prime Video and streaming devices are alleged to infringe Nokia’s suite of multimedia patents covering a variety of technologies, including video compression and delivery methods, content recommendation systems and even hardware solutions.

Amazon’s lawsuit is quite unusual because Nokia essentially abandoned its cloud business in the summer of 2023, admitting that it did not have enough resources to compete in this area. Moreover, Nokia is an AWS cloud partner in Germany. It is unknown whether Amazon is ready to fight to the end in court or is simply trying to force Nokia to the negotiating table. Often such disputes end in out-of-court agreements.