Discovery Communications Files Lawsuit Against Amazon.com Over Kindle

The last time I wrote about Discovery Communications was in October 2007 when they announced that they were acquiring HowStuffWorks.com for $250 million.  A couple months before that, Discovery also bought out TreeHugger.com for about $10-$15 million.  It looks like Discovery wants to collect some money for themselves now because they have filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com over the Amazon.com Kindle.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware.  The lawsuit is in regards to a patent for an encyption system used for e-books.  Discovery is seeking triple damages and “continuing royalty” for the device.

Amazon.com’s Kindle has become very popular with the recent release of the second version with a text-to-speech feature.

“The Kindle and Kindle 2 are important and popular content delivery systems,” stated Joseph A. LaSala Jr., general counsel of Discovery. “We believe they infringe our intellectual property rights, and that we are entitled to fair compensation.”

Discovery filed for a patent in 1999 that was titled “electronic book security and copyright protection system.”  They were awarded the patent in 2007.

[via WSJ]

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