On May 15, Amazon issued a law suit against Discovery Communications, claiming that Discovery is infringing upon four e-commerce patents. This law suit comes not long after the law suit that Discovery issued against Amazon which claimed that technologies used in the Amazon Kindle infringes on a patent of their own.

This news, as reported by Business Insider, isn’t expected to blow up into a huge story since the affected sector within each company is rather small.

Discovery is quick to point out that Amazon’s rebuttal is unrelated to their e-reader suit. At first, it may seem like Amazon is trying to “change the subject,” but patent infringement looks the same from any angle. However, Amazon is likely using their follow-up suit as a method of bringing Discovery to the table for negotiations. Also, a good point regarding patents was made in the article:

…but it’s a reminder that patents are sticky, and everyone is potentially touching everyone else’s intellectual property.

That’s one reason Apple might not be overly aggressive with its mobile patents, such as suing Palm over its use of multi-touch mobile UI technology, which Apple has patented. Palm has plenty of patents, too, and Apple could be violating some.