State Farm has filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc. that accuses the e-commerce giant of using its patented technology develop elder care services for its Alexa virtual assistant software.
According to a Reuters report, the lawsuit filed in a Delaware federal court said Amazon copied aspects of the Sundial senior health care assistance software that belonged to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance. The lawsuit said the companies held meetings in 2019 and 2020 about integrating the technology ”“ which allows caregivers to connect with independent-living seniors ”“ into Alexa.
The lawsuit accused Amazon of copying State Farm”™s technology, including the check-in and monitoring features, the “circle of friends” aspect for coordinating caregiver responsibilities and a chatbot for seniors. State Farm launched Sundial in June 2020 and Amazon debuted its Alexa Care Hub in November 2020 and its Alexa Together subscription service in December 2021.
to interact with the platform.
“This is just the latest example of Amazon unfairly using its widespread platform and global scale to siphon other companies’ innovations for its own gain,” State Farm said, adding this was the first time it ever filed a patent infringement lawsuit.
Amazon did not publicly comment on the lawsuit.
