Google and Sonos continue to bicker in court and overrun themselves with patent lawsuits for smart speakers. This time Google sees seven of its patents infringed.
Google on Monday filed two lawsuits in the Northern California District Court against smart speaker maker Sonos alleging patent infringement on wireless speakers, US tech magazine The Verge reports. This is another round of the ongoing legal disputes between Google and Sonos. Sonos had previously accused Google of various patent infringements in several lawsuits. After an initial verdict in favor of Sonos, Google had to remove some features from its smart speakers. A lawsuit already filed by Google is still pending.
The lawsuits now filed deal with a total of seven potential patent infringements, writes The Verge. One of the two lawsuits is about keyword recognition and wireless charging. A second lawsuit is about how within a group of loudspeakers it is determined which of the loudspeakers reacts to a voice input.
“Aggressive deceptive campaign”
According to Google spokesman José Castañeda, the lawsuits were filed to “defend Google’s technology”. In addition, Sonos has continued to infringe patents. We want to take action against this. Google is going one step further: Google intends to file further lawsuits with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) in the next few days. Google wants to ensure that Sonos is no longer allowed to import products into the USA that infringe Google’s patents.
Apparently it goes against the grain of Google that Sonos has chosen to take legal action rather than tacitly accepting the mutual use of patents. Castañeda said that Sonos “launched an aggressive and deceptive campaign against our products.” This would be “at the expense of our mutual customers”.
Patent Infringements
First, Google and Sonos worked together on smart speakers. Google also wanted to bring its services to Sonos speakers. Then in 2020 there was a scandal. Sonos sued Google because the company believed Google had stolen Sonos’ multi-room technology to use in its own Google Home smart speakers. According to the accusation, Google also used the technology in Nest and Pixel products.
Because Sonos was unable to reach an agreement with Google, the manufacturer applied to the ITC for a US sales ban on Google notebooks, smartphones and speakers. The ITC ruled in favor of Sonos in January 2022, following a previous judge’s ruling. In order to avoid a sales ban, Google then adjusted or removed some of the functions, such as the option to change the volume of speakers in groups centrally at the same time using voice commands.
(olb)
