Amazon.com 2011 Annual Report Download - page 69

implemented systems and methods for personalization Amazon and Zappos infringe a patent owned by the plaintiff
purporting to cover an “Integrated Computerized Sales Force Automation System” (U.S. Patent No. 6,067,525), and
seeks monetary damages, interest, costs, and attorneys’ fees. In August 2011, the plaintiff filed an additional
complaint against us in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas alleging, among other
things, that certain supply chain, sales, marketing, and inventory systems and methods used by Amazon and Zappos
infringe a patent owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover a “Sales Force Automation System and Method” (U.S.
Patent No. 7,941,341), and seeking monetary damages, interest, costs, and attorneys’ fees. We dispute the
allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
In April 2011, Walker Digital LLC filed six complaints against us for patent infringement in the United
States District Court for the District of Delaware. The complaints allege that we infringe several of the plaintiff’s
U.S. patents by, among other things, providing “cross benefits” to customers through our promotions, (U.S.
Patent Nos. 7,831,470 and 7,827,056), using a customer’s identified original product to offer a substitute product
(U.S. Patent No. 7,236,942), offering products and services from retailers at discounted prices and arranging for
users to buy them from merchants (U.S. Patent No. 6,249,772), using our product recommendations and
personalization features to offer complementary products together (U.S. Patent Nos. 6,601,036 and 6,138,105),
enabling customers to subscribe to a delivery schedule for products they routinely use at reduced prices (U.S.
Patent No. 5,970,470), and offering personalized advertising based on customers’ preferences identified using a
data pattern (U.S. Patent No. 7,933,893). A seventh complaint, filed in the same court in October 2011, alleges
that we infringe plaintiff’s U.S. Patent No. 8,041,711 by offering personalized advertising based on customer
preferences that associate data with resource locators. The complaints seek monetary damages, interest,
injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys’ fees. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously
defend ourselves in these matters. In June 2011, the complaint alleging that we infringed U.S. Patent
No. 6,249,772 was dismissed.
In July 2011, GPNE Corp. filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District
Court for the District of Hawaii. The complaint alleges, among other things, that certain aspects of our
technology, including our Kindle e-reader, infringe three patents owned by the plaintiff purporting to cover a
“Network Communication System Wherein a Node Obtains Resources for Transmitting Data by Transmitting
Two Reservation Requests” (U.S. Patent No. 7,555,267), a “Communication System Wherein a Clocking Signal
from a Controller, a Request from a Node, Acknowledgement of the Request, and Data Transferred from the
Node are all Provided on Different Frequencies, Enabling Simultaneous Transmission of these Signals” (U.S.
Patent No. 7,570,954) and a “Network Communication System with an Alignment Signal to Allow a Controller
to Provide Messages to Nodes and Transmission of the Messages over Four Independent Frequencies” (U.S.
Patent No. 7,792,492) and seeks monetary damages, interest, costs, and attorneys’ fees. We dispute the
allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.
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.
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.
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
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