By Reuters

Amazon has recently sued Nokia, accusing the giant Finnish company of infringing on a dozen of its cloud patents. The court battle will likely explore the technical underpinnings of several Nokia products to determine whether the Finnish company stole Amazon’s ideas or its engineers created them on their own.

This lawsuit highlights the conflicts between the two tech companies in a highly competitive landscape. Specifically, Amazon alleges that Nokia has misused Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology to improve its cloud solutions.

The patents in question cover crucial areas such as cloud computing infrastructure, security, and performance. Amazon maintains that these innovations have been fundamental in developing its AWS platform, launched in 2006, and that Nokia has taken advantage of these technologies without authorization.

The lawsuit also seeks an injunction against any future infringement of the claimed patents, whether direct or indirect. In addition, Amazon asked the court for “adequate damages as compensation for the patent infringement that has occurred, along with pre-trial interest and costs.”

In addition to the above, Amazon maintains that Nokia customers may be dragged into this litigation since, according to the complaint, Nokia is causing “patent infringement by its customers.” It is “deliberately blind to the possibility that its inducing acts will cause infringement” of its customers.

As an example, the document states that “Nokia sells Nokia AirFrame Data Center and Nokia CloudBand Infrastructure Software with the knowledge and intent that customers who purchase it will use it for infringing use and, therefore, that customers will be directly infringing the 211 patent,” referring in this case to a 2016 patent titled ‘Management of communications between computer nodes.’

In response to these allegations, Nokia has issued a statement indicating that it will assess the allegations and vigorously defend itself in court. The Finnish company denies infringing Amazon’s patents and is prepared to face the claims in court proceedings.