Amazon hit with lawsuit over streaming tech
Patented tech in dispute is allegedly foundational to the Amazon and Twitch streaming systems | Invention transmits real-time audio and video to one or more devices.
Amazon is facing a complaint over its cloud-computing and Twitch live streaming tech that powers services for numerous content providers and events, including the NFL, Viacom, PAC-12 Conference, Notre Dame, as well as during the 2018 Olympics and World Cup.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday, January 5 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Food company BSD alleges that the “majority of live broadcasts” on the tech company’s cloud computing service, AWS, and Twitch are powered by the technology described in its 2002 patent, US number 6,389,473 (the ‘473 patent’).
According to the complaint, BSD, formerly known as Emblaze, sought patent protection for its new broadcasting technology that allowed transmission of real-time audio and video to one or more devices and, where necessary, adjusting video quality based on changing bandwidth.
The Israeli company noted that previous live broadcasting technologies had required expensive dedicated streaming media servers to maintain a specific connection with each and every viewer and to actively monitor each stream.
BSD’s invention, contended the filing, eliminated the need for such costly equipment through the use of common and inexpensive Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) servers–the kind of server that powers the web.
Amazon's £500bn media assets
Critically, HTTP, possesses the ability to scale in terms of simultaneous viewers, a feature that BSD argued is pivotal to the success of Amazon and Twitch.
BSD accused Amazon of infringing by implementing these streaming standards, noting that Amazon’s media assets, which include Prime Video, Prime Music and Twitch, are worth about $500 billion, making them almost as valuable as [the] company’s giant cloud-computing business, while Twitch is worth $15 billion.
“Twitch’s valuation is not surprising given that it claims its infringing technology has made it the third most popular video website behind YouTube and Netflix,” noted the filing.
According to BSD, Amazon.com and Twitch knew, “or should have known”, that the adaptive multi-bit rate technology of the ’473 patent was foundational to the Amazon and Twitch streaming systems.
‘Wilful and deliberate’
“Even a cursory review of the ’473 patent by Amazon and Twitch’s patent counsel would have shown that the Amazon (eg, AWS Elemental Media Services) and Twitch live streaming systems infringe the ’473 patent,” said the complaint.
BSD added that Amazon had known that its actions constituted infringement of the ’473 patent, and that Amazon also received actual or constructive notice of the ’473 patent through the rejection of some of its own patent filings.
“Amazon’s infringement has occurred with full knowledge of the ‘473 patent since at least December 18, 2015, and has been willful and deliberate ever since,” the company added.
BSD has filed two prior patent infringement lawsuits concerning the ‘473 patent. The first suit was against Apple relating to the tech company’s implementation of the HLS streaming standard.
The other was against Microsoft Corporation, and was directed to Microsoft’s own homebrewed live standard, called “smooth streaming”.
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