Patent and trademark – Amazon largely prevails on patent claims

Where Amazon moved for summary judgement in a patent infringement suit, it prevailed on non-infringement on most of the remaining patents, was found not to have engaged in willful infringement and is not liable for foreign damages based on testing.

Background

DivX LLC sued Amazon.com Inc., and Amazon Web Services Inc. for infringement of seven patents pertaining to video streaming. Amazon moves for summary judgment of non-infringement of the remaining 943, 141, 806, 303 and 938 patents, no willful infringement and no foreign damages based on testing.

943 Patent

DivX accuses Amazon’s products of infringement based on their use of an Advanced Encryption Standard, or AES, cipher, which is a subcomponent of the AES algorithm. The uncontroverted evidence shows that summary judgment of noninfringement in Amazon’s favor is warranted because the AES cipher does use an “outside” or “external” key.

141 Patent

Amazon contends that the accused products do not infringe because DivX’s infringement mapping does not follow the court imposed ordering of steps. The court agrees. It is clear that the accused products do not infringe upon the 141 Patent because they do not adhere to required step ordering. DivX’s muddled assertions to the contrary fail to convince.

806 Patent

Although not framed as such on the papers, the parties’ positions on whether the accused products infringe the 806 Patent are essentially matters of (additional) claim construction—whether the claim language requires “generating media metadata” both “prior to decoding” the source video file and “during a transcoding of” the source video file; or whether “generating media metadata” occurs merely “prior to decoding” where the decoding occurs “during a transcoding of” the source video file.

Amazon backs the former construction, which would compel summary judgment in its favor, while DivX supports the latter. The court agrees with DivX’s understanding. For these reasons, Amazon’s summary judgment arguments on the 806 Patent as to “generating media metadata” fail.

The parties’ next set of arguments concern the additional language in claim 1 requiring “performing the following at each of the plurality of transcoding devices in parallel: . . . decoding the at least a portion of the source video file based on the source format to generate a decoded portion . . . and encoding the plurality of decoded images of the decoded portion of video into an . . . alternate video stream . . .”. The second issue is dispositive of summary judgment on the 806 Patent. It is undisputed that the accused products’ “split-and-stitch” method divides a video into different timed portions that are each encoded by a different encoder. However, the presence of antecedent basis in the relevant portion of claim 1 imposes the requirement that the plurality of transcoding devices encode the same portion of video. Amazon is thus entitled to summary judgment of noninfringement on the 806 Patent.

303 and 938 Patents

Amazon argues for noninfringement of the 303 and 938 patents on a common ground. Based on the understanding of the claim language, however, and because on the current record, it is undisputed that that I-frames do not utilize in-loop filtering. Amazon’s motion is denied on these common grounds.

Amazon also argues for noninfringement of the 938 patent on one additional ground: that DivX fails to show that the accused products practice “decoding by a plurality of processors in parallel” because video decode in the accused products occurs within dedicated hardware inside of the secure “trusted execution environment” of the devices’ system-on-chip, and the functioning of that hardware within the hardware’s third party providers Amlogic and MediaTek’s knowledge, not Amazon’s. The court agrees.

Willfulness

DivX asserts that enhanced damages for willful infringement are available against Amazon here as to the 141 (including pre-complaint knowledge), 806, 303, 938 and 943 Patents. Amazon argues that the evidence does not permit the recovery of such damages. On the record before the court, Amazon is correct.

Amazon at most knew of the 141 Patent since 2020, did not revert or design around any alleged infringement until late 2025, Amazon and DivX had some general interactions in the past and Amazon’s technical employees do not check for infringement. This evidence is insufficient to support willful infringement as a matter of law.

As to all but the 141 Patent, Amazon cannot be said to have knowledge of or been willfully blind to the existence of DivX’s asserted patents, and even as to the 141 Patent, the evidence does not permit the conclusion that Amazon was willfully blind to the fact of infringement. Accordingly, Amazon is entitled to summary judgment of no willful infringement.

Foreign damages

There is no evidence that suggests that testing in Seattle was necessary for the realization of foreign profits by the accused products. Accordingly, Amazon is entitled to summary judgment of no foreign damages as to the 141, 938 and 943 Patents and claim 16 of the 303 Patent.

Defendants’ motion for summary judgment granted in part, denied in part.

Divx, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc., Case No. 1:24-cv-2061, May 4, 2026. EDVA at Alexandria (Nachmanoff). VLW 026-3-203. 28 pp.

Full-Text Opinion
VLW 026-3-203