Discovery Sues Amazon For Patent Infringement Over Kindle Electronic Book Delivery
This story was written by Staci D. Kramer.
Turn away for a second and the damnedest things drop in your inbox: Discovery (NSDQ: DISAB) Communications (NSDQ: DISCA), home of Shark Week, filed a suit today in U.S. District Court against Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), claiming that the sale of the Kindle and its electronic book delivery infringes on one of its patents. The claim, over U.S. Patent Number 7,298,851 for the "Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System," dates back to the work of Discovery and John S. Hendricks on a digital content and delivery system in the 1990s. Discovery General Counsel Joseph A. LaSala, Jr.: "The Kindle and Kindle 2 are important and popular content delivery systems. We believe they infringe our intellectual property rights, and that we are entitled to fair compensation. Legal action is not something Discovery takes lightly. Our tradition as an inventive company has produced considerable intellectual property assets for our shareholders, and today's infringement litigation is part of our effort to protect and defend those assets." Release | Lawsuit (pdf) More to come.
By Staci D. Kramer