American company, Discovery Communications Inc – who are indeed the people behind the Discovery Channel – has accused Amazon of infringing patents covering electronic book delivery and security with its Kindle e-book reader and said the online retailer should be forced to pay royalties.

Discovery Patent Holdings filed the complaint Wednesday in Delaware’s federal district court (as a side note, never go to Delaware, a few outlet stores and a lot of empty space, I made that mistake, don’t follow me child). Anyway, in that complaint the company claims the infringement of two patents.

A report from Reuters continues, “Discovery Patent was assigned the patents on Monday by Discovery Communications, which owns several educational and nonfiction cable television stations, such as Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Discovery Communications was issued the patents in 1999 and 2007.”

The web retailer’s infringing includes “the operation of the Amazon.com website and the provision of services related to the Kindle, Kindle 2, Kindle DX and Kindle software,” the complaint said.

There’s been no comment made thus far but we like the idea of the grizzly masses behind the Discovery Channel (ice road truckers, trawler workers, motorcycle builders and Bear Grylls) storming the Amazon offices demanding they put a stop to sales of the Kindle. It’ll probably just result in a boring, extremely long legal battle though. Shame.