IBM said it had filed two lawsuits against Amazon, alleging that the group has infringed five patents. The patents cover technologies which Amazon uses to recommend additional purchases to customers, technologies that are used to store data, and technologies that determine which advertisements are displayed on the site.
The lawsuits were filed in two district courts in Texas and come after four years of wrangling over the matter.
John Kelly, IBM’s senior vice president of technology and intellectual property, said the company had tried to reach a licensing agreement with Amazon a dozen times. He said that most, “if not all”, of Amazon’s business was built using these five patents.
