Alexus came before Alexa: Amazon fined $50 million

Patent lawsuit
Alexus instead of Alexa: Why Amazon has to pay a $50 million fine for its voice assistant

Every child now knows Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa. However, a company has now been able to prove in court that it was there earlier with its assistant – and even anticipated the name.

As When Amazon introduced its Amazon Echo with the voice assistant Alexa in 2014, it seemed like a product that seemed to come straight from a science fiction film. But the inspiration for Alexa was a much more real product, the company claims VB Assets. It accuses Amazon of having copied its much older voice assistant. Now Amazon has to pay a fine of millions.

This was decided by a federal court in the US state Delaware. VB Assets had already filed a lawsuit there in 2019. The accusation is serious: Years before Amazon, the company had developed the so-called Cybermind, its own prototype of a loudspeaker that can accept and answer commands on demand as a digital assistant. And in which Amazon is also said to have shown interest.

Before Alexa

The company, then called Voice Box, showed how the voice assistant worked in a TV clip in 2006 – eight years before the Echo was introduced. The cybermind can already answer simple questions about the weather and can find the basketball schedule for that day from the Internet. A recipe for a chocolate cheesecake also anticipates the use in the kitchen that Amazon often shows in advertising clips.

Of course, the technology shown is nowhere near as sophisticated as Alexa later on. The cybermind still has to be activated manually instead of listening to a keyword like “Alexa”. The questions must be asked much more clearly according to a fixed formula. And the retrieval times are unlikely to come close to Amazon’s quasi-delay-free answers. Nevertheless, the moderators were already very impressed by the concept.

…came Alexus

Of course, the basic idea for a smart voice assistant existed earlier. After all, as early as the 1960s, “Star Trek” or the classic “2001: A Space Odyssey” computers with which you can have conversations. According to the lawsuit, however, Amazon is said to have specifically imitated the way in which the cybermind recognizes and then processes speech. And in doing so, it violated four of the company’s specific patents.

In fact, the group is said to have known about VB Asset’s capabilities very early on: Employees from the two companies had already met in 2011 to discuss possible collaboration, confirms VB Assets. The aim was to make voice recognition technology usable in Amazon products. Instead, Amazon released its own product three years later. And in doing so, “we destroyed our chance of building a successful business,” argues VB Assets in the lawsuit. From 2016 onwards, Amazon is said to have poached “dozens” of employees from the small competitor.

One detail about the naming seems particularly absurd. After Voice Box had already supported navigation device manufacturers such as Tomtom with voice commands for their devices, the company began working with the US car manufacturer Lexus. The concept of the specially developed voice assistant was first presented to the public six months before Amazon’s Alexa. And based on the name of the car brand, I listened to the familiar-sounding name Alex.

From a bearer of hope to a problem child

This burden of evidence appears to have been enough for the court. After VB Assets lost a lawsuit against Amazon in the past, the court in Delaware now followed the company’s allegations. Amazon has to pay $46.7 million because of the patent infringements, but in installments. Amazon did not respond to requests for comment from multiple media outlets.

Given the current situation of the Alexa division, the punishment for the retail giant is only a drop in the ocean. Almost a year ago it became known that the division had brought in ten billion dollars for the company – in 2022 alone. The team was struggling with how to sensibly monetize the complex development of the voice assistant; Alexa had long since become a problem child from being a great hope (find out more here). Since then, numerous jobs have been cut, including long-time Alexa boss Dave Limp (Here you can find our detailed interview) is expected to leave the company at the end of the year.

Sources: Reuters, Court documents

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