Sonos, a smart-speaker maker, has won a significant legal battle against Google over patents it claimed the company had violated.
The court ordered that the offending systems and other Google smart speaker technology that use them cannot be brought into the United States.
If Google refuses to pay a licensing fee to Sonos, the company argues that it will have to “degrade” its speakers.
But the company claims that it has already developed workarounds to prevent any disruptions.
Google says it disagrees with the decision of the US International Trade Commission, which ruled in its favor. We’ll “continue to defend ourselves against Sonos’ outrageous claims about our collaboration and intellectual property,” Google adds.
Google infringed all five patents that Sonos complained about in August 2021, according to the court.
The lawsuits were filed by two different firms in late 2017, which claim a series of technological inventions for multi-room speakers that synchronize music volume across several rooms or “zones” in a house.
When it initially debuted, Sonos’ distinguishing characteristic was multi-room audio, which won the tiny firm an innovation award at the CES technology exhibitions in 2005.
The features affected by the US decision, according to Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus, included “the set up for controlling home audio systems, the synchronization of many speakers, the independent volume control of various speakers, and stereo pairing of speakers.”
There’s a chance that Google may be able to deteriorate or eliminate product characteristics in such a way as to avoid the importation ban, according to him.
“Alternatively, Google may – as have other businesses – pay a reasonable royalty for the technologies it has stolen,” he added.
The trade commission, nevertheless, took issue with Google’s updated designs it had presented during the legal battle, which avoided utilizing Sonos’ patents.
Although Google’s Nest smart home staff has announced that users will have to adjust each speaker separately rather than all at once, and that they will no longer be able to modify the volume of their phone’s physical volume button, some users are still reporting changes.
A smaller number of users may need to use a distinct program to finish the set-up. A Google representative added, “While we disagree with today’s decision, we note that the International Trade Commission has approved our modified designs, and we do not anticipate any impact
Google said it would also “obtain further legal review.”
The commission’s decision has a 60-day grace period before the import ban, but it is subject to presidential review. The fact that Google believes it will not be disrupted implies that its workarounds should be available by then.
The companies’ rivalry has evolved into a series of drawn-out fights, with Google and Sonos clashing over the use of smart assistants – such as Google Assistant – in their technology. There are currently a number of other open cases between the two.