Fenwick Helps Secure Trial Victory for Amazon in Waco, Texas

Law360 reported that a Waco, Texas jury found in favor of Amazon last week in a patent suit filed by an Israeli-based kitchen technology startup in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

The plaintiff Freshub claimed in a suit filed in 2019, shortly after it was purchased by New York-based Ikan Holdings LLC, that Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant infringed three patents related to voice shopping. Freshub was seeking $246 million in damages, plus an ongoing royalty based on Amazon’s sale of Alexa-enabled devices. The jury’s verdict, reached one day after the week-long trial, cleared Amazon of the plaintiff’s allegations.

According to Law360, Fenwick’s J. David Hadden, who represents Amazon, “told the jury during closing arguments that there was ‘something very strange in this case,’ revealed by the timeline of events: Amazon invented Alexa and the Echo smart speaker in November 2014, but the patents being asserted were not filed until 2017 and 2018.”

Amazon was represented by Fenwick litigation partners David Hadden, Saina Shamilov, Todd Gregorian and Ravi Ranganath; and associates Allen Wang, Jeffrey Ware, and Eric Young.

The case is Freshub Inc. et al. v. Amazon.com Inc. et al., case number 6:21-cv-00511, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

The full article is available on Law360, and the decision was also covered in Bloomberg and Law.com (subscriptions required).​