I'll summarize my take. First of all, take the article with a grain of salt. Possible issues brought up by Bart Eppenauer are being raised by the former chief counsel of Microsoft, a direct competitor to AWS (Azure). And the linked article has a somewhat alarmist phrasing.
That being said, there appears to be something real here. This contract is one that applies to thousands of businesses -- cloud computing is taking both small business and big business by storm, and AWS has the majority of the business in this area. The clause itself reads like this (retrieved today from http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ ):
During and after the Term, you will not assert, nor will
you authorize, assist, or encourage any third party to
assert, against us or any of our affiliates, customers,
vendors, business partners, or licensors, any patent
infringement or other intellectual property infringement
claim regarding any Service Offerings you have used.
Now, I am not a lawyer, so my interpretation could be wrong; even if I WERE a lawyer I would be saying that nothing was certain at least until a court had ruled on a case that depended on this clause. But it appears that this clause is very broad in time (from now onwards), in scope (covers patents as well as "all IP") and in targets (against Amazon OR most anyone else like their customers or business partners). The clause is restricted ONLY by the statement that it applies to a claim about "Service Offerings you have used".
Now, my impression would be that this means you can't sue Amazon (or their partners/customers/etc) over IP violations BY THE AWS PRODUCT ITSELF. In other word, if you use AWS you can't then later sue Amazon or their customers saying that AWS itself violates your patent on using a computer remotely (or whatever ridiculous patent you may hold). With this interpretation it is an extremely reasonable provision and should not concern any company involved in normal business.
Furthermore, the one case where Amazon has asserted this clause (against Appistry)[1] fit this model. Appistry sued Amazon saying that Amazon violated its patent; Amazon countered that Appistry was using AWS and with this clause had agreed not to sue. That case is still underway.
So my evaluation is that this is probably an OK clause. But it certainly skirts the line and you ought to have your lawyer look it over. After that, you will probably ignore what your lawyer says and sign it anyway because Amazon is the giant of cloud computing and you don't have a whole lot of choice.
"Now, my impression would be that this means you can't sue Amazon (or their partners/customers/etc) over IP violations BY THE AWS PRODUCT ITSELF. In other word, if you use AWS you can't then later sue Amazon or their customers saying that AWS itself violates your patent on using a computer remotely (or whatever ridiculous patent you may hold). With this interpretation it is an extremely reasonable provision and should not concern any company involved in normal business."
The amount of bad armchair lawyering here is saddening :)
Why do people need to go on impressions?
The agreement "govern(s) your access to and use of the Service Offerings (as defined below)". Hey, looks like they define Service Offerings, below.
So rather than guess or have an impression as to what it means, why don't we look at the definition of service offerings, a defined term in the contract.
“Service Offerings” means the Services (including associated APIs),
the AWS Content, the AWS Marks, the AWS Site, and any other product
or service provided by us under this Agreement.
Service Offerings do not include Third Party Content.
“Service” means each of the web services made available by us
or our affiliates, including those web services described in the Service Terms.
So there you go, no need to guess or have an impression of what it covers.
That is what it covers when it means service offerings.
As for it's okayness -- i'm actually generally in favor of these kinds of clauses. However, this one is a bit too broad.
I hope you aren't an open source project who uses AWS, and who AWS uses to provide services in some fashion. Because if you are, congrats, Amazon can do what they want with your software and you can't stop them (ie violate the GPL, whatever).
I'll summarize my take. First of all, take the article with a grain of salt. Possible issues brought up by Bart Eppenauer are being raised by the former chief counsel of Microsoft, a direct competitor to AWS (Azure). And the linked article has a somewhat alarmist phrasing.
That being said, there appears to be something real here. This contract is one that applies to thousands of businesses -- cloud computing is taking both small business and big business by storm, and AWS has the majority of the business in this area. The clause itself reads like this (retrieved today from http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ ):
Now, I am not a lawyer, so my interpretation could be wrong; even if I WERE a lawyer I would be saying that nothing was certain at least until a court had ruled on a case that depended on this clause. But it appears that this clause is very broad in time (from now onwards), in scope (covers patents as well as "all IP") and in targets (against Amazon OR most anyone else like their customers or business partners). The clause is restricted ONLY by the statement that it applies to a claim about "Service Offerings you have used".Now, my impression would be that this means you can't sue Amazon (or their partners/customers/etc) over IP violations BY THE AWS PRODUCT ITSELF. In other word, if you use AWS you can't then later sue Amazon or their customers saying that AWS itself violates your patent on using a computer remotely (or whatever ridiculous patent you may hold). With this interpretation it is an extremely reasonable provision and should not concern any company involved in normal business.
Furthermore, the one case where Amazon has asserted this clause (against Appistry)[1] fit this model. Appistry sued Amazon saying that Amazon violated its patent; Amazon countered that Appistry was using AWS and with this clause had agreed not to sue. That case is still underway.
So my evaluation is that this is probably an OK clause. But it certainly skirts the line and you ought to have your lawyer look it over. After that, you will probably ignore what your lawyer says and sign it anyway because Amazon is the giant of cloud computing and you don't have a whole lot of choice.
[1] - http://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-fights-patent-suit-using...