An nameless reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A California decide has thrown out a $32.5 million verdict win for Sonos against Google after two of Sonos’ patents had been deemed unenforceable and invalid. Because of this, Google has began to re-introduce software program options it had eliminated on account of Sonos’ lawsuit. In a call dated October 6, U.S. District Choose William Alsup mentioned that Sonos had wrongfully linked its patent functions for multi-room audio know-how to a 2006 software in an effort to make them seem older and declare that its innovations got here earlier than Google’s merchandise, as first reported by Reuters.
“Sonos filed the provisional software from which the patents in go well with declare precedence in 2006, nevertheless it didn’t file the functions for these patents and current the asserted claims for examination till 2019,” the decision (PDF) reads. “By the point these patents issued in 2019 and 2020, the trade had already marched on and put the claimed invention into observe. The truth is, in 2014, 5 years earlier than Sonos filed the functions and introduced the claims, accused infringer Google LLC shared with Sonos a plan for a product that will observe what would change into the claimed invention.”
The choice states that the 2 corporations had been exploring a possible collaboration, however that it by no means materialized. Alsup goes on to notice that Google started introducing its personal merchandise that featured multi-room audio know-how in 2015, and likewise that Sonos waited till 2019 to pursue claims on the invention. “This was not a case of an inventor main the trade to one thing new,” Alsup wrote. “This was a case of the trade main with one thing new and, solely then, an inventor popping out of the woodwork to say that he had provide you with the concept first — wringing contemporary claims to learn on a competitor’s merchandise from an historical software.” “We not too long ago made a change to speaker teams for Nest audio system, shows, and Chromecast the place sure units can solely belong to 1 speaker group at a time within the Google Dwelling app,” the corporate wrote in a blog post. “A federal decide has discovered that two patents that Sonos accused our devices of infringing are invalid. In mild of this authorized resolution we’re pleased to share that we are going to be rolling again this alteration.”