New Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 Tablets are displayed during a launch event in New York September 17, 2014. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Acquire Licensing Rights
Sept 19 (EuroJournal) – Amazon (AMZN.O) on Tuesday convinced a Delaware federal jury that features of its Amazon Music and Kindle e-reader apps for “seeking” specific parts of song lyrics and audiobooks did not infringe a Virginia inventor’s patent.
The jury said after a five-day trial that Amazon’s technology did not infringe a patent covering a “remote control for multimedia seeking” owned by inventor Curt Evans’ TrackTime.
The jury also determined that the patent was invalid.
Representatives for Amazon and TrackTime did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the verdict.
TrackTime sued Amazon in 2018 for infringing two of Evans’ patents related to synchronizing text to audio. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika invalidated one of the patents in 2021.
TrackTime told the jury that Amazon Music’s X-Ray Lyrics feature and Kindle’s Audible Immersion Reading, which allows a user to read an ebook and listen to its audiobook version at the same time, infringed the remaining patent.
A TrackTime expert estimated that Amazon owed a maximum of $60.7 million in damages for the alleged infringement, according to court filings.
The case is TrackTime LLC v. Amazon.com Services LLC, U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, No. 1:18-cv-01518.
For TrackTime: Robert Greenspoon and William Flachsbart of Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig
For Amazon: David Hadden, Saina Shamilov, Ravi Ranganath, Todd Gregorian and Melanie Mayer of Fenwick & West
Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington
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