Adam Molina / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A California decide has overturned a current jury verdict in favor of Sonos.
- The decide discovered that a few of Sonos’s multi-speaker patents had been unenforceable.
- This could finally open the door for Google’s audio gadgets to regain lost features.
Google was compelled to take away a few features from its Nest audio system and good shows following authorized motion by speaker firm Sonos. Now, it appears to be like like Google could be a step closer to resurrecting these features.
A California decide overturned a current $32.5 million jury verdict in favor of Sonos towards Google (h/t: Reuters), declaring that Sonos’s patents had been unenforceable.
Judge William Alsup discovered that Sonos had tried to “improperly” join its 2019 patent functions for multi-speaker applied sciences to provisional functions filed in 2006.
“This was not a case of an inventor leading the industry to something new,” Alsup was quoted as saying by Reuters. “This was a case of the industry leading with something new and, only then, an inventor coming out of the woodwork to say that he had come up with the idea first.”
Google had argued that Sonos intentionally held off on making use of for these patents till the search large had launched gadgets with this tech.
What occurs now?
Back in May, a jury discovered that Google’s Chromecast and Nest gadgets had infringed on Sonos’s patents relating to multi-speaker performance. This May 2023 verdict additionally adopted a 2022 ruling towards Google in favor of Sonos.
These earlier rulings resulted in Google eradicating features like multi-speaker teams, the power to management the quantity of a multi-speaker group, and the power to faucet your cellphone’s quantity rocker to management the quantity of a speaker group.
However, this newest resolution to overturn the jury verdict probably opens the door for Google to reintroduce these features. In saying so, Sonos and Google are nonetheless reportedly embroiled in authorized battles within the likes of Canada, Europe, and the US. You, due to this fact, may not need to maintain your breath for these features to return to Google gadgets simply but.