Sonos has scored a serious victory vs. Google at a U.S. Worldwide commerce tribunal, convincing a decide to not block its imports.
Google and Sonos have been in a heated patent battle over wi-fi speaker expertise since 2020. Sonos sued the expertise big for infringing a number of of its patents to create its personal suite of wi-fi speaker merchandise. Sonos received a restricted import ban on Google’s good audio system in 2022 alongside a $32.5 million verdict earlier this yr. However Google took the battle to Sonos with a counter-suit.
Google says Sonos’ audio system that make the most of voice management expertise are infringing on patents Google holds for the tech associated to its Google Assistant. Now the Worldwide Commerce Fee (ITC) will make a ruling on that grievance someday in 2024. In the meantime, Sonos was in a position to persuade a decide on the ITC to not block imports of its audio system with voice capabilities as this patent conflict is carried out in courts.
Administrative legislation decide Cameron Elliot says Sonos’ imports don’t violate federal legislation. A full fee is ready to resolve in January 2024 whether or not or to not affirm that ruling. In a latest interview with The Verge, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence says the corporate resorted to suing Google as a result of it felt just like the dialog was going nowhere.
“We tried to handle this constructively,” Spence says. “Others within the trade are extra constructive of their conversations with us. It obtained to a degree the place I didn’t really feel it was constructive anymore and we would have liked to take motion to each arise for shoppers and ourselves as nicely. We needed to arise for all of the innovations that we’ve had. Now we have over 1,000 patents. Google, I believe, infringes over 100 of these right this moment.
“It felt prefer it was the time to say, “No, I’m not going to allow you to get away with merely infringing on the whole lot we do,” Spence continues. “We determined then to take the trail that we’ve got.”