Amazon Files Lawsuit Protesting Microsoft’s JEDI Cloud Contract with the Pentagon

E-commerce giant Amazon has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, alleging that the government’s process in choosing a winner for cloud services was biased.

Amazon Web Services confirmed that it has filed a lawsuit challenging the Defense Department’s decision to award Microsoft a major contract for cloud services. The Pentagon announced that Microsoft had won the contract on October 25.

The JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) deal could be worth up to $10 billion.

“The Complaint and related filings contain source selection sensitive information, as well as AWS’s proprietary information, trade secrets, and confidential financial information, the public release of which would cause either party severe competitive harm,” Amazon told the court in a filing. The company is seeking a protective order. “The record in this bid protest likely will contain similarly sensitive information.”

“We have confidence in the qualified staff at the Department of Defense, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC this week.

The case has been assigned to Judge Patricia Elaine Campbell-Smith.

Amazon said in a filing that assigning the case to another judge on the court, Eric Bruggink, “would conserve judicial resources and promote the efficient administration of justice.”

This is because Bruggink ruled on a bid protest over JEDI that Oracle filed last year. That case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and have not been compensated for this article.