A Native American tribe and a small computer company have reportedly sued Amazon and Microsoft, claiming that they’re infringing on patents relating to supercomputer technology.
The lawsuits are the latest twists in a relatively new strategy under which companies assign patents to tribes that can in turn assert sovereign immunity to short-circuit review procedures.
Reuters and CNBC reported that the suits were filed today in federal district court in Virginia by the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and SRC Labs. SRC, a company founded in 1996 by the late supercomputer pioneer Seymour R. Cray, assigned the patents in question to the tribe in August.
