Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Sound & Video Contractor.
Earlier this year, we reported that Sonos had been awarded $32.5 million in what seemingly marked the end of a lengthy patent infringement battle with Google. In a turn of events, a judge has now thrown that verdict out and slammed Sonos in the process.
Last Friday (October 6, 2023), US District Judge William Alsup not only nullified the previous verdict but deemed two of Sonos’ patents to be “unenforceable and invalid.”
Alsup’s decision lambasts Sonos for bringing the suit to court, writing, “This was not a case of an inventor leading the industry to something new. This was a case of the industry leading with something new and, only then, an inventor coming out of the woodwork to say that he had come up with the idea first — wringing fresh claims to read on a competitor’s products from an ancient application.”
A key factor in Alsup’s decision was the length of time it took Sonos to bring up the supposed infringement. “The essence of this order is that the patents issued after an unreasonable, inexcusable, and prejudicial delay of over thirteen years by the patent holder, Sonos, Inc.” wrote Alsup. “Sonos filed the provisional application from which the patents in suit claim priority in 2006, but it did not file the applications for these patents and present the asserted claims for examination until 2019. By the time these patents were issued in 2019 and 2020, the industry had already marched on and put the claimed invention into practice.
A representative for Sonos remarked that the company would be appealing the decision, which they called “wrong on both the facts and law.”
In a blog post, Google celebrates the decision, while also calling for patent reform.
“Sonos has been running a years-long, misleading campaign against helpful features in our Google Home devices and smart speaker devices on spurious patent grounds,” reads Google’s post. “[T]he United States Patent and Trademark Office needs more funding so that it can keep up with advancing technology, and dedicate the time that is needed to examine increasingly complex patents.”
The following was originally published June 5, 2023:
After a lengthy legal battle, Sonos has been awarded $32.5 million in their lawsuit against Google, per the verdict of a San Francisco jury. The jury determined that Google did indeed infringe on one of the two Sonos patents in question.
The battle began in 2020, with Sonos filed a case with the US International Trade Commission saying that Google had infringed on their patents. The International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Sonos, which led to an import ban on some of the Google products in question. Most recently, Google has fired back by suing Sonos over their smart speaker voice control technology, claiming infringement. That trial began earlier this month and is still ongoing.
The trial that just wrapped up saw the jury decide that Google did not infringe on Sonos’ patent for their home app, but did infringe on one of their speaker patents.
In a statement to The Verge, Eddie Lazarus, Sonos’ chief legal officer and CFO said, “We are deeply grateful for the jury’s time and diligence in upholding the validity of our patents and recognizing the value of Sonos’s invention of zone scenes. This verdict re-affirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio, as the International Trade Commission has already ruled with respect to five other Sonos patents. In all, we believe Google infringes more than 200 Sonos patents and today’s damages award, based on one important piece of our portfolio, demonstrates the exceptional value of our intellectual property. Our goal remains for Google to pay us a fair royalty for the Sonos inventions it has appropriated.”
