Commitments and Contingencies | COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES Commitments We have entered into non-cancellable operating, capital, and finance leases for equipment and office, fulfillment, sortation, delivery, data center, and renewable energy facilities. Rental expense under operating lease agreements was $336 million and $267 million for Q2 2016 and Q2 2015 , and $657 million and $533 million for the six months ended June 30, 2016 and 2015 . The following summarizes our principal contractual commitments, excluding open orders for purchases that support normal operations, as of June 30, 2016 (in millions): Six Months Ended December 31, Year Ended December 31, 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Thereafter Total Debt principal and interest $ 166 $ 1,324 $ 312 $ 1,272 $ 246 $ 9,157 $ 12,477 Capital lease obligations, including interest (1) 1,607 3,251 1,995 691 268 184 7,996 Finance lease obligations, including interest (2) 88 177 181 185 188 1,582 2,401 Operating leases 670 1,140 1,034 909 848 3,553 8,154 Unconditional purchase obligations (3) 341 699 506 263 123 35 1,967 Other commitments (4) (5) 736 573 430 339 283 2,062 4,423 Total commitments $ 3,608 $ 7,164 $ 4,458 $ 3,659 $ 1,956 $ 16,573 $ 37,418 ___________________ (1) Excluding interest, current capital lease obligations of $3.4 billion and $3.0 billion are recorded within “Accrued expenses and other” as of June 30, 2016 , and December 31, 2015 , and $4.3 billion and $4.2 billion are recorded within “Other long-term liabilities” as of June 30, 2016 , and December 31, 2015 . (2) Excluding interest, current finance lease obligations of $107 million and $99 million are recorded within “Accrued expenses and other” as of June 30, 2016 , and December 31, 2015 , and $1.8 billion and $1.7 billion are recorded within “Other long-term liabilities” as of June 30, 2016 , and December 31, 2015 . (3) 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. For those 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. (4) Includes the estimated timing and amounts of payments for rent and tenant improvements associated with build-to-suit lease arrangements and equipment lease arrangements that have not been placed in service and digital media content liabilities associated with long-term digital media content assets with initial terms greater than one year. (5) Excludes $1.6 billion of tax contingencies for which we cannot make a reasonably reliable estimate of the amount and period of payment, if any. Pledged Assets As of June 30, 2016 , and December 31, 2015 , we have pledged or otherwise restricted $581 million and $418 million of our cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and certain property and equipment as collateral for standby and trade letters of credit, guarantees, debt relating to certain international operations, real estate leases, and amounts due to third-party sellers in certain jurisdictions. Other Contingencies As previously disclosed, we recently determined that we processed and delivered orders of consumer products for certain individuals and entities located outside Iran covered by the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act or other United States sanctions and export control laws. The consumer products included books, music, other media, apparel, home and kitchen, health and beauty, jewelry, office, consumer electronics, software, lawn and patio, grocery, and automotive products. Our review is ongoing and we have voluntarily reported these orders to the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and the United States Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security. We intend to cooperate fully with OFAC and BIS with respect to their review, which may result in the imposition of penalties. For additional information, see Item 5 of Part II, “Other Information - Disclosure Pursuant to Section 13(r) of the Exchange Act.” Legal Proceedings The Company is involved from time to time in claims, proceedings, and litigation, including the matters described in Item 8 of Part II, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data — Note 7 — Commitments and Contingencies — Legal Proceedings” of our 2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K and in Item 1 of Part 1, “Financial Statements — Note 3 — Commitments and Contingencies — Legal Proceedings” of our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the Period Ended March 31, 2016, as supplemented by the following: In December 2013, Appistry, Inc. filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc. for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud infringes U.S. Patent Nos. 8,200,746, entitled “System And Method For Territory-Based Processing Of Information,” and 8,341,209, entitled “System And Method For Processing Information Via Networked Computers Including Request Handlers, Process Handlers, And Task Handlers.” The complaint seeks injunctive relief, an unspecified amount of damages, treble damages, costs, and interest. In March 2015, the case was transferred to the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. In July 2015, the court granted our motion for judgment on the pleadings and invalidated the patents-in-suit. In August 2015, the court entered judgment in our favor. In September 2015, the plaintiff appealed that judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and filed a new complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. The 2015 complaint alleges, among other things, that Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, Simple Workflow, and Herd infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 8,682,959, entitled “System And Method For Fault Tolerant Processing Of Information Via Networked Computers Including Request Handlers, Process Handlers, And Task Handlers,” and 9,049,267, entitled “System And Method For Processing Information Via Networked Computers Including Request Handlers, Process Handlers, And Task Handlers.” The 2015 complaint seeks injunctive relief, an unspecified amount of damages, treble damages, costs, and interest. In July 2016, the court invalidated the patents asserted in the 2015 complaint and granted our motion to dismiss the complaint with prejudice. In July 2016, Appistry appealed that judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in these matters. In March 2014, Kaavo, Inc. filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc. for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Beanstalk and CloudFormation infringe U.S. Patent No. 8,271,974, entitled “Cloud Computing Lifecycle Management For N-Tier Applications.” The complaint seeks injunctive relief, an unspecified amount of damages, costs, and interest. In June 2015, the case was stayed pending resolution of a motion for judgment on the pleadings in a related case. In May 2016, the case was reopened for claim construction discovery. In July 2015, Kaavo Inc. filed another complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The 2015 complaint alleges, among other things, that CloudFormation infringes U.S. Patent No. 9,043,751, entitled “Methods And Devices For Managing A Cloud Computing Environment.” The 2015 complaint seeks injunctive relief, an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, and interest. In January 2016, the 2015 case was stayed pending resolution of a motion for judgment on the pleadings. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in these matters. In March 2015, Zitovault, LLC filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc., Amazon.com, LLC, Amazon Web Services, Inc., and Amazon Web Services, LLC for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges that Elastic Compute Cloud, Virtual Private Cloud, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto-Scaling, and Elastic Beanstalk infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,484,257, entitled “System and Method for Maintaining N Number of Simultaneous Cryptographic Sessions Using a Distributed Computing Environment.” The complaint seeks injunctive relief, an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, and interest. In January 2016, the case was transferred to the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. In June 2016, the case was stayed pending resolution of a review petition we filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter. 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. In addition, for some matters for which a loss is probable or reasonably possible, an estimate of the amount of loss or range of losses is not possible 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. See also “Note 6 — Income Taxes.” |