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What the Lawsuit Says

• MIT says Amazon Web Services infringes two university-owned patents involving technology used to generate cryptographic keys.
• The disputed technology involves physical unclonable functions, or PUFs, which can derive device-specific values from physical characteristics of hardware.
• MIT is seeking monetary damages, while Amazon had not publicly responded to the allegations when the lawsuit was reported.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken Amazon Web Services to federal court, accusing the cloud-computing giant of infringing two MIT patents involving technology used to secure digital information.

MIT filed the patent infringement lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The case is Massachusetts Institute of Technology v. Amazon Web Services Inc., No. 1:26-cv-14600.

The dispute centers on what are known as physical unclonable functions, or PUFs.

In simplified terms, PUF technology can use tiny physical variations created during semiconductor manufacturing to produce values associated with a particular piece of hardware. Those characteristics can be used for security purposes, including generating cryptographic keys.

MIT alleges AWS uses PUF technology to create unique cryptographic keys in a manner that infringes two patents owned by the university. According to the complaint reviewed by USA Herald, the technology covered by MIT's patents grew from innovations developed by an MIT professor.

That puts the lawsuit squarely inside one of the most valuable areas of modern computing — protecting information stored and processed through cloud infrastructure.

AWS operates computing infrastructure used by businesses, government agencies, developers and other organizations. But MIT's lawsuit does not establish that AWS infringed the university's patents, and it does not mean AWS customers' information is insecure. This is a patent-ownership and infringement dispute involving security technology.

MIT will have to prove infringement. Amazon can challenge MIT's interpretation of the patent claims, deny that its technology practices those claims, attack the validity of the asserted patents, or raise other defenses permitted under federal patent law.

Amazon had not filed a publicly reported response when news of the lawsuit emerged Monday.

MIT is seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages.

There is also a notable second case.

MIT filed a similar patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft in Texas in May. That litigation remains pending. Investing.com

That means Amazon isn't the first major cloud provider MIT has taken to court over the technology.

The Amazon litigation is particularly important because patent cases involving cloud infrastructure can turn on highly technical questions hidden beneath familiar services. A court may have to compare the exact language of MIT's patent claims against how the accused AWS technology actually operates.

That process is far more specific than asking whether two technologies generally accomplish the same thing. In patent litigation, individual claim limitations matter.

The lawsuit is also just beginning.

No court has determined that Amazon infringed MIT's patents, that the patents are invalid, or that MIT is entitled to damages. Those questions will be decided through the litigation unless the parties resolve the dispute first.

For now, the established fact is straightforward, one of America's leading research universities has accused the world's largest cloud infrastructure provider of using security technology covered by two MIT-owned patents — and MIT has brought that fight into federal court.

About the Author

Samuel López is a reporter and news correspondent for USA Herald who has reported for the publication since 2022. López has more than two decades of legal-sector experience analyzing state and federal litigation and complex legal matters. His background provides a practical foundation for reporting on federal lawsuits, emerging technology disputes and the legal issues surrounding AI and cloud computing.

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