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. In June 2012, the case was transferred to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. 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 alleged, 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 sought monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. In June 2012, the complaint was dismissed with prejudice. Later in June
2012, the plaintiff filed a new complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware alleging that the same AWS file storage systems infringe three additional patents, all entitled Methods and Systems for a Storage
System (U.S. Patent Nos. 7,197,662; 7,958,388; and 7,543,177), and seeking 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, Droplets, Inc. filed a complaint against us for patent infringement in the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleged, among other things, that by offering web applications and software Amazon infringed 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 Bandwidth Connection (U.S. Patent No. 6,687,745) and a System and Method for Delivering Remotely Stored Applications and Information (U.S. Patent No. 7,502,838), and
sought monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. In June 2012, the case was transferred to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In December 2012, we entered into a settlement of the
litigation that included, among other things, a payment to the plaintiff. The settlement was not material to either the current or future years.
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 seek monetary damages, injunctive relief, costs, and attorneys fees. In August 2012, the court
entered judgment declaring the 060 patent to be invalid; the case is proceeding with respect to the 676, 103, and 382 patents. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this
matter.
In December 2011, Personalweb Technologies LLC filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services LLC
in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon ElastiCache infringe U.S. Patent No. 5,978,791, entitled
Data Processing System Using Substantially Unique Identifiers To Identify Data Items, Whereby Data Items Have The Same Identifiers; U.S Patent No. 6,415,280, entitled Identifying And Requesting Data In Network Using
Identifiers Which Are Based On Contents Of Data; U.S Patent No. 6,928,442, entitled Enforcement And Policing Of Licensed Content Using Content-Based Identifiers;
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