A federal judge in Virginia agreed to dismiss one patent infringement claim against Amazon this week while the court will defer on the remaining allegations brought by developers who claim that the e-commerce company poached its voice recognition technology and natural language understanding to expand its Echo and Alexa products.
Senior U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia, granted Amazon’s motion in part to dismiss Dialect’s complaint with respect to one of its seven patents at issue. Amazon moved to dismiss the complaint with respect to six of the seven patents, arguing that the patents at issue were void because they are directed to patent-ineligible subject matter pursuant to 35 U.S.C. Section 101 or under the two-step Alice test, holding that “abstract ideas … are not patentable,” according to the opinion filed Wednesday.
