Commitments and Contingencies

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2021

Commitments and Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract]

COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES

Commitments

The following summarizes our principal contractual commitments, excluding open orders for purchases that support normal operations and are generally cancellable, as of December 31, 2021 (in millions):


	Year Ended December 31,
	2022		2023		2024		2025		2026		Thereafter		Total
Long-term debt principal and interest	$	2,841	$	4,852	$	7,014	$	3,400	$	3,829	$	52,784	$	74,720
Operating lease liabilities	7,838		7,178		6,649		6,128		5,574		32,902		66,269
Finance lease liabilities, including interest	8,278		4,772		2,278		1,355		1,220		7,963		25,866
Financing obligations, including interest (1)	423		422		419		410		417		6,404		8,495
Leases not yet commenced	1,206		1,902		2,094		2,145		2,237		21,571		31,155
Unconditional purchase obligations (2)	5,969		5,910		5,158		4,213		4,159		9,493		34,902
Other commitments (3)(4)	2,905		1,620		1,290		1,006		1,137		11,325		19,283
Total commitments	$	29,460	$	26,656	$	24,902	$	18,657	$	18,573	$	142,442	$	260,690

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(1)Includes non-cancellable financing obligations for fulfillment, sortation, and data center facilities. Excluding interest, current financing obligations of $111 million and $196 million are recorded within “Accrued expenses and other” and $3.4 billion and $6.2 billion are recorded within “Other long-term liabilities” as of December 31, 2020 and 2021. The weighted-average remaining term of the financing obligations was 19.0 and 18.8 years and the weighted-average imputed interest rate was 3.8% and 3.2% as of December 31, 2020 and 2021.

(2)Includes unconditional purchase obligations related to long-term agreements to acquire and license digital media content that are not reflected on the consolidated balance sheets and certain products offered in our Whole Foods Market stores. For those digital media content agreements with variable terms, we do not estimate the total obligation beyond any minimum quantities and/or pricing as of the reporting date. Purchase obligations associated with renewal provisions solely at the option of the content provider are included to the extent such commitments are fixed or a minimum amount is specified.

(3)Includes the estimated timing and amounts of payments for rent and tenant improvements associated with build-to-suit lease arrangements that are under construction, asset retirement obligations, and liabilities associated with digital media content agreements with initial terms greater than one year.

(4)Excludes approximately $3.2 billion of accrued tax contingencies for which we cannot make a reasonably reliable estimate of the amount and period of payment, if any.

In addition, in May 2021, we entered into an agreement to acquire MGM Holdings Inc. (“MGM”) for approximately $8.5 billion, including MGM’s debt, subject to customary closing conditions. We expect to fund this acquisition with cash on hand.

Suppliers

During 2021, no vendor accounted for 10% or more of our purchases. We generally do not have long-term contracts or arrangements with our vendors to guarantee the availability of merchandise, particular payment terms, or the extension of credit limits.

Other ContingenciesWe are disputing claims and denials of refunds or credits related to various non-income taxes (such as sales, value added, consumption, service, and similar taxes), including in jurisdictions in which we already collect and remit these taxes. These non-income tax contr

Legal Proceedings

The Company is involved from time to time in claims, proceedings, and litigation, including the following:

In November 2015, Eolas Technologies, Inc. filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that the use of “interactive features” on www.amazon.com, including “search suggestions and search results,” infringes U.S. Patent No. 9,195,507, entitled “Distributed Hypermedia Method and System for Automatically Invoking External Application Providing Interaction and Display of Embedded Objects Within A Hypermedia Document.” The complaint sought a judgment of infringement together with costs and attorneys’ fees. In February 2016, Eolas filed an amended complaint seeking, among other things, an unspecified amount of damages. In February 2017, Eolas alleged in its damages report that in the event of a finding of liability Amazon could be subject to $130-$250 million in damages. In April 2017, the case was transferred to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

In May 2018, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and CF Dynamic Advances LLC filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. The complaint alleges, among other things, that “Alexa Voice Software and Alexa enabled devices” infringe U.S. Patent No. 7,177,798, entitled “Natural Language Interface Using Constrained Intermediate Dictionary of Results.” The complaint seeks an injunction, an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, an ongoing royalty, pre- and post-judgment interest, attorneys’ fees, and costs. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

In December 2018, Kove IO, Inc. filed a complaint against Amazon Web Services, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Amazon S3 and DynamoDB infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 7,814,170 and 7,103,640, both entitled “Network Distributed Tracking Wire Transfer Protocol,” and 7,233,978, entitled “Method And Apparatus For Managing Location Information In A Network Separate From The Data To Which The Location Information Pertains.” The complaint seeks an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, interest, and injunctive relief. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

Beginning in March 2020, with Frame-Wilson v. Amazon.com, Inc. filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, a number of cases have been filed in the U.S. and Canada alleging, among other things, price fixing arrangements between Amazon.com, Inc. and third-party sellers in Amazon’s stores, monopolization and attempted monopolization, and consumer protection and unjust enrichment claims. Some of the cases include allegations of several distinct purported classes, including consumers who purchased a product through Amazon’s stores and consumers who purchased a product offered by Amazon through another e-commerce retailer. The complaints seek billions of dollars of alleged actual damages, treble damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief. Individuals have also initiated arbitrations based on substantially similar allegations. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in these matters.

In November 2020, the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections alleging that Amazon uses data relating to our marketplace sellers in a manner that infringes EU competition rules. The Statement of Objections seeks to impose unspecified fines and remedial actions. We disagree with the preliminary assertions of the European Commission and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

In July 2021, the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection (the “CNPD”) issued a decision against Amazon Europe Core S.à r.l. claiming that Amazon’s processing of personal data did not comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. The decision imposes a fine of €746 million and corresponding practice revisions. We believe the CNPD’s decision to be without merit and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

In November 2021, Jawbone Innovations, LLC filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon.com Services, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Amazon Echo smart speakers and displays, Fire TV Cube, and Echo Buds infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 7,246,058, entitled “Detecting Voiced and Unvoiced Speech Using Both Acoustic and Nonacoustic Sensors”; 8,019,091, entitled “Voice Activity

Detector (VAD)-Based Multiple-Microphone Acoustic Noise Suppression”; 8,280,072, entitled “Microphone Array with Rear Venting”; 8,321,213 and 8,326,611, both entitled “Acoustic Voice Activity Detection (AVAD) for Electronic Systems”; 8,467,543, entitled “Microphone and Voice Activity Detection (VAD) Configurations for Use with Communications Systems”; 10,779,080, entitled “Dual Omnidirectional Microphone Array (DOMA)”; and 11,122,357, entitled “Forming Virtual Microphone Arrays Using Dual Omnidirectional Microphone Array (DOMA).” The complaint seeks an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, interest, and injunctive relief. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

In December 2021, the Italian Competition Authority (the “ICA”) issued a decision against Amazon Services Europe S.à r.l., Amazon Europe Core S.à r.l., Amazon EU S.à r.l., Amazon Italia Services S.r.l., and Amazon Italia Logistica S.r.l. claiming that certain of our marketplace and logistics practices in Italy infringed EU competition rules. The decision imposes a fine of €1.13 billion and remedial actions. We believe the ICA’s decision to be without merit and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

In January 2022, VideoLabs, Inc. and VL Collective IP LLC filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Glow, Amazon Echo Show, Fire TV, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV Stick, Fire Tablets, AWS Elemental MediaConvert, AWS Elemental Live, AWS Elemental Server, AWS Elemental MediaPackage, AWS Elemental MediaLive, and Amazon Elastic Transcoder infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 7,769,238 and 8,139,878, both entitled “Picture Coding Method and Picture Decoding Method”; and 7,970,059, entitled “Variable Length Coding Method and Variable Length Decoding Method”; that Amazon Prime Video, AWS Elemental MediaConvert, AWS Elemental Live, AWS Elemental Server, AWS Elemental MediaPackage, AWS Elemental MediaLive, Amazon Elastic Transcoder, and Amazon Kinesis Video Streams infringe U.S. Patent No. 8,605,794, entitled “Method for Synchronizing Content-Dependent Data Segments of Files”; that Amazon Echo Show, Amazon Echo Spot, Amazon Connect, Amazon Chime, and Amazon Kinesis Video Streams infringe U.S. Patent No. 7,266,682, entitled “Method and System for Transmitting Data from a Transmitter to a Receiver and Transmitter and Receiver Therefore”; that AWS Auto Scaling and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,880,156, entitled “Demand Responsive Method and Apparatus to Automatically Activate Spare Servers”; and that Amazon Prime Video infringes U.S. Patent No. 7,440,559, entitled “System and Associated Terminal, Method and Computer Program Product for Controlling the Flow of Content.” The complaint seeks an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, interest, and injunctive relief. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.

In addition, we are regularly subject to claims, litigation, and other proceedings, including potential regulatory proceedings, involving patent and other intellectual property matters, taxes, labor and employment, competition and antitrust, privacy and data protection, consumer protection, commercial disputes, goods and services offered by us and by third parties, and other matters.

The outcomes of our legal proceedings and other contingencies are inherently unpredictable, subject to significant uncertainties, and could be material to our operating results and cash flows for a particular period. We evaluate, on a regular basis, developments in our legal proceedings and other contingencies that could affect the amount of liability, including amounts in excess of any previous accruals and reasonably possible losses disclosed, and make adjustments and changes to our accruals and disclosures as appropriate. For the matters we disclose that do not include an estimate of the amount of loss or range of losses, such an estimate is not possible or is immaterial, and we may be unable to estimate the possible loss or range of losses that could potentially result from the application of non-monetary remedies. Until the final resolution of such matters, if any of our estimates and assumptions change or prove to have been incorrect, we may experience losses in excess of the amounts recorded, which could have a material effect on our business, consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.