On Wednesday, Discovery Patent Holdings LLC filed a lawsuit against Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) over the use of technology related to the distribution of, and securing of, digital texts that Discovery feels falls under their patents. It is worth pointing out, at this juncture, that this is not, precisely, a new lawsuit. In March of 2009, Discovery Communications filed a similar suit against Amazon (with Amazon suing Discovery back shortly after) with regard to these patents and the more recent one is simply a reflection of Discovery’s choice to move the patents to a separate corporate entity as they continue proceedings. The main question on peoples’ minds, of course, is what this will mean for the future of the Kindle platform.
While I’m not intricately familiar with patent law, it would seem from an intuitive standpoint that the Kindle is safe. As far as I, or seemingly anybody else covering the topic for that matter, recall, there was no effort made previous to these suits(at least that managed to achieve public recognition) by Discovery to defend their rights in the matter. Given that the patents in question were assigned in 1999 and 2007, it would seem rather late in the game to expect results on this front. Again, I’m no expert and don’t claim to have the only, or even the best, interpretation of what the outcome will be. All I can say is that I’m not terribly concerned for my Kindle.
the best case for this would be for amazon to drop encryption from the books (if they try to say that they control distributing text, then they are trying to claim the entire Internet. not going to happen)