Amazon was ordered to pay $46.7 million after a jury found that the company willfully violated four patents held by VB Assets, LLC, the successor to VoiceBox Technologies, a Bellevue, Wash.-based company that was an early leader in speech recognition and natural language technologies.
The verdict and judgment Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware were the culmination of a July 2019 lawsuit. GeekWire has contacted Amazon for comment on the outcome and the possibility of appeal.
VB Assets alleged in the suit that VoiceBox’s efforts to build a business based on the patented technologies “were crushed” when Amazon introduced its Alexa and Echo products “and used its enormous size and clout to poach dozens of VoiceBox Technologies’ engineers and scientists.”
The suit said VoiceBox began exploring a potential business relationship with Amazon in 2011. The two companies held several meetings that included discussions about VoiceBox’s patented technology. The talks did not lead to a deal.
In 2014, Amazon launched Alexa and its first-generation Echo speaker, which the suit called “strikingly similar to the patented technology that VoiceBox Technologies showed Amazon in 2011.”
Nuance Communications acquired VoiceBox in 2018.
The verdict was reported earlier by Reuters. Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati represented VB Assets; Ashby & Geddes and Fenwick & West represented Amazon.
