Google and Audio Sonos companies have been in the battle of old legal for patent violations. After two years of lawsuits and the Counters and preliminary decisions that support Sonos last year, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) has fortified that Google is indeed, indeed, using the patented Sonos audio streaming feature and has issued orders that have the potential to ban all Google products violate patents In order not to be imported and sold in the US (through the New York Times).
The device affected by ITC commands not only includes Google’s smart speakers Google nest but also smartphone and chromebook pixels, and a ban on all these products can be a major blow to the technology giant.
Legal conflict between the two companies began when Sonos sued Google in January 2020 claimed the technology giant that violated at least 100 patents related to multiroom audio playback and control. Sonos accused him of sharing details about this patented technology with Google Back in 2013, when the two companies strive to complete the agreement for Google’s voice assistant to run Sonos’s smart speakers.
At that time, Sonos was working on features called concurrency which would allow several voice assistants including people like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant to run simultaneously with Sonos speakers. The deal fell because Google did not like that idea, The Washington Post reported last year. Even so, Google continued not to only introduce a “home” brand of branded smart speakers but also allegedly using Sonos patents without paying licensing fees.
Not only that, but Sonos also accused Google of using his monopolition on the market and prevented him from launching several new products using legal obstacles including the requirements of distribution agreements. Unlike Google to block competitors from plants in the market segment which imagined to bloom.
Following the initial lawsuit of the speaker company, Google replied to Sonos and alleged patent violations related to content notifications, DRM, echo cancellation, mesh networking, and personalized searches. A few months down, Sonos sued Google again (through the threshold) to break five patents more related to music casting to smart speakers from smartphones and controlling music in different rooms.
As a result of the latest verdict by ITC, Google may have to deactivate several features that rely on five patents highlighted in the verdict. This patented technology allows many speakers to connect in pairs and work as stereo settings. They will also allow users to control the volume of speakers directly from their smartphones. This feature was initially disabled on Android 12 (according to Mishaal Rahman on Twitter), potentially in response to Sonos’s previous lawsuit. Last year, Google did rework some of these features to avoid the cost of a patent violation but could not escape the ITC lens, Bloomberg reported.
At the same time, Google warns a few more changes to the Google Home application and the speaker nest and smart display. First, users will no longer change the volume of all speaker groups from the Google Home application and have to change the volume for each speaker individually. Changes may also solve speaker groups that contain smart speakers from other brands including Lenovo and JBL.
The biggest risk in front of Google, as we mentioned above, is a potential ban on the US on devices that use patents highlighted in ITC decisions. To avoid ban, Google can repatriate this decision in the US patent court or request for the President’s review. However, the Biden government must block the verdict ITC in the next 60 days or Google can face the impact, said Bloomberg.