Photograph Credit score: Jako Janse van RensburgGoogle should pay Sonos $32.5 million for infringing on the corporate’s sensible speaker patent, a jury verdict decided on Friday.
Good speaker firm Sonos has gained its ongoing authorized battle towards Google, with Google now ordered to pay the corporate $32.5 million for infringing on its patent. The feud started in 2020 when Sonos accused Google of copying its patented multiroom audio know-how following the businesses’ partnership in 2013.
Sonos gained its case on the U.S. Worldwide Commerce Fee, leading to a restricted import ban on a few of the Google gadgets in query. Moreover, Google has needed to pull some options from its lineup of sensible audio system and shows.
In August, Google sued Sonos over allegations that the audio firm infringed on Google’s sensible audio system and voice management know-how. The newest trial started earlier this month.
“We’re deeply grateful for the jury’s time and diligence in upholding the validity of our patents and recognizing the worth of Sonos’ invention of zone scenes,” says Eddie Lazarus, Sonos’ chief authorized officer and CFO. “This verdict re-affirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio, because the Worldwide Commerce Fee has already dominated with respect to 5 different Sonos patents.”
“In all, we imagine Google infringes greater than 200 Sonos patents, and at this time’s damages award, based mostly on one necessary piece of our portfolio, demonstrates the distinctive worth of our mental property. Our purpose stays for Google to pay us a good royalty for the Sonos innovations it has appropriated,” Lazarus continues.
“It is a slender dispute about some very particular options that aren’t generally used,” says Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels. “Of the six patents Sonos initially asserted, just one was discovered to be infringed, and the remaining have been dismissed as invalid or not infringed. We’ve all the time developed know-how independently and competed on the deserves of our concepts. We’re contemplating our subsequent steps.”
Regardless of Sonos’ patent infringement victory, the jury determined that Google’s Dwelling app didn’t infringe on a separate patent filed by Sonos. Decide William Alsup additionally instructed jurors to “disregard a $90 million damages estimate from a Sonos professional witness, saying he had determined that a few of the proof supplied was inadmissible.”
The decide expressed frustration that this case ever went to trial and that the 2 sides had been unable to settle, calling it “emblematic of the worst of patent litigation.”