Sonos Sues Google For Allegedly Stealing Smart Speaker Tech (theverge.com) 49
Audio company Sonos has sued Google for allegedly copying its patented speaker technology while undercutting it at market. From a report: The New York Times reports that it filed two lawsuits covering five patents on its wireless speaker design. Sonos is also asking for a sales ban on Google's laptops, phones, and speakers in the US through a separate case with the International Trade Commission. Sonos claims that Google stole its multiroom speaker technology after getting access to it through a 2013 partnership. The original partnership would let Sonos speakers support Google Play Music, but the company allegedly used patented technology in its now-discontinued Chromecast Audio device, then continued to use it in the Google Home lineup of smart speakers and the Pixel product lineup. Meanwhile, Sonos says Google subsidized its own products to sell them at a cheaper price while using them to extract more data from buyers.
What does undercutting have to do with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
If Google is infringing on the patent, then they can be sued for that.
Trying to bring in the point that Google may be undercutting them can at worst can only weaken their claim that patent infringement is what it's actually about.
Re: What does undercutting have to do with it? (Score:2)
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Re: What does undercutting have to do with it? (Score:2)
This makes the world a worse place.
Google needs a beat down from the DOJ.
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Sonos is a $2 billion company that only makes audio products. It is likely far larger than the the Google home audio group. You have this backwards, Sonos is the one trying to monopolize multi-room audio.
Re: What does undercutting have to do with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
By flipping through a few, Sonos should never have been granted some of these.
Gut feeling says that Google knows that prior art is going to destroy a number of these and just went ahead and ignored Sonos' lawyers.
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Selling at a loss to establish a market and push out competitors is an illegal use of monopoly.
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Google undercutting them by selling at a loss, and making it back on the data is contributing to the loss Sonos alleges they have suffered from the patent infringement. The main claim is infringing on the patent, but they want the judge to take this into account when assessing damages (assuming they win the case).
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The point is that after Google took the IP, they started selling their speakers at a loss using profits from elsewhere to push Sonos out of the market.
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Plaintiff Sonos, Inc. (“Sonos” or “Plaintiff”) hereby asserts the following claims for patent infringement of United States Patent Nos. 8,588,949, 9,195,258, 9,219,959, 10,209,953, and 10,439,896 (“patents-in-suit”; attached hereto as Exhibits 1-5 respectively) against Defendant Google LLC (“Google” or “Defendant”)
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Which is fine, as I said.
So why are they trying to gather some sort of sympathy over Google undercutting them? Do they feel that their patent infringement case isn't strong enough on its own? Why wouldn't it be, unless it was contrived, and only weakly plausible? I'm saying that bringing up the fact that Google is undercutting them as evidence that they are being hurt by Google's actions could potentially weaken a claim that should have stood fine on its own..
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So why are they trying to gather some sort of sympathy over Google undercutting them?
In some jurisdictions the additional step of trying to run the competitor out of business by underselling them on the patent one is infringing upon is also an illegality, not a sympathy bid. Not sure about this particular type of underselling but the ITC often gets cases about trade dumping which is a related form of this behavior.
Re:What does undercutting have to do with it? (Score:4, Informative)
livewire alone destroys 8,588,949 & 9,195,258 [wikipedia.org] Was developed specifically for multiple rooms. [wikipedia.org]
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So, is this a case of "common thing done in the real world" + "on a computer" + "over the internet" + "on a wifi network" adding new, obvious patents at each step?
undercutting is part of the infringement damages (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to bring in the point that Google may be undercutting them can at worst can only weaken their claim that patent infringement is what it's actually about.
What makes you think that?
By selling the product at a lower price they both take market share - cut the number of items the patent holder can sell - and drive down the price - cutting his income on those he still CAN sell. Both are damages.
The infringer, without the development costs, perhaps without startup costs, and typically with better economies of scale due to more existing infrastructure and previous products, can often afford to sell the product at prices where the patent holder would operate at a loss and go bankrupt.
This is EXACTLY what the patent system is supposed to be preventing, or mitigating with payment of damages for infringement and treble damages for wilful infringement.
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Re:undercutting is part of the infringement damage (Score:5, Interesting)
Because if true, the claim of patent infringement can stand on its own. Whining about how Google is undercutting them on something they are claiming to have developed can create the appearance that their claim isn't as strong as they are saying, or possibly that they wouldn't have otherwise even cared if Google might have technically infringed on their patent, and are actually only sore at Google for undercutting them.
IANAL, and I want to be clear that I am in not commenting in any way on the merits of Sonos' claims (I work for Google, so commenting on litigation would get me a call from the attorneys, at a minimum). Also, I don't know anything about the merits of Sonos' claims.
However, I find the law interesting and know something about how lawsuits work, and complaints with multiple claims aren't a problem. While what you say has merit in normal interpersonal arguments, in which one is expected to focus on the core issue, I have read lots of court pleadings that do exactly this sort of thing, and worse. I've seen lots of cases where people argue A, B and C, where B can only be true if A is false and C can only be true if A and B are false. "I didn't do it, and if I did do it it wasn't wrong, and if I did do it and it was wrong, it didn't actually hurt anyone, and if I did do it and it was wrong and it did hurt someone, they deserved it", and similar. Well, that example sounds more like what the defendant would say, not the plaintiff, but you get the idea.
Courts have no problem with this. They examine each argument on its merits, independently of the rest. If any one of them holds up, then the court acts on that. It doesn't matter if the claims are mutually contradictory -- though if the contradictory claims rest on claims of contradictory facts, then the court will have a problem with it.
Moreover, I've read rulings that dismissed a later suit because a claim wasn't brought up in an earlier suit. It doesn't matter if the claims in the two suits were contradictory in some way, you're supposed to raise all claims relevant to a certain matter and jurisdiction in a single suit. This rule exists in the interest of "judicial efficiency", partly to avoid cluttering the court dockets unnecessarily and partly to prevent you from using a series of similar suits to punish someone by forcing them to defend themselves repeatedly. I think there's a good chance that if Sonos didn't raise the competition claim in this suit and then proceeded to lose the patent claim, they would not be allowed to raise the competition claim in another suit. So they have to raise them both, and doing so doesn't weaken either one. Nor does it strengthen either one; if they can't substantiate their claims with facts to satisfy the court with a preponderance of evidence on either one, they'll lose both.
Re: undercutting is part of the infringement damag (Score:2)
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The whole point of patents is to drive innovation. What we see in 99%? of patent disputes is the exact opposite. It's companies rushing to patent obvious ideas that are constantly becoming technologically feasible with the march of progress.
Maybe the world of smart speakers would look a little different had it not been for Sonos. Maybe smart speakers would have taken a little longer to mature. But maybe smart speakers would have matured even faster if it were not for the hurdles presented by litigation.
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The whole point of patents is to drive innovation. What we see in 99%? of patent disputes is the exact opposite. It's companies rushing to patent obvious ideas that are constantly becoming technologically feasible with the march of progress.
Part of the reason that big companies get patents on all of these obvious little things isn't because they're trying to stop innovation. Instead it's to protect themselves from patent trolls or similar outfits that might come after their company several years down the road. When these companies get a patent of their own, it's essentially a recognition by the government that they as a company have an implementation which differs from other implementations and is recognized as being sufficiently different to
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Sure some companies don't use their patents except against patent trolls. But this just highlights my point that patents are used as weapons (offensively, and sometimes defensively). If patents did not exist, they wouldn't be needed to defend against offensive patents.
It's like saying we need guns to defend ourselves in a dangerous world full of guns. It might be hard or impossible to get rid of the all the guns. But patents are a social/legal construct. They are easy to get rid of if we decide we don'
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The point of patents is not to drive innovation - economic necessity does that. The point of patents is to share knowledge. Without patents, someone with a unique solution would have incentive to keep their processes and methods secret. This forces mankind to constantly reinvent the wheel, and sometimes the secret is lost entirely. With patents, we don't need to wonder what is in the wonder drug and we don't need to guess how it is made - instead, after 20+ years we can make a generic using the patents as a
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I thought the sharing knowledge was just a side effect of obtaining protection.
It's all well and good to get an exclusive right to make a thing, but how does some other inventor trying to make something similar and avoid patent infringement if they don't know how yours is made? You have to have your specific implementation on file to claim infringement and everybody has to know how it works to avoid infringement.
I don't think it's meant to be a repository of human know-how to safeguard it from knowledge lo
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In support of your argument, the constitution specifically says: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
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What is the point of sharing knowledge? I would argue that knowledge sharing is not an end in itself, but rather a means to the goal of driving innovation.
And I would rather Sonos keep their secrets secret. The legal jeopardy of accidentally stumbling onto one of their patents far outweighs the utility of having their amazing innovations become publicly usable in 20 years (when they will no doubt be beyond useless, if they were ever even that useful to begin with)
How many innovators are stifled by the esis
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3. The harm produced by Google’s infringement has been profoundly
compounded by Google’s business strategy to use its multi-room audio products to
vacuum up invaluable consumer data from users and, thus, further entrench the
Google platform among its users and ultimately fuel its dominant advertising and
search platforms. In furtherance of this strategy, Google has not merely copied
Sonos’s patented technology, it has also subsidized the prices of its patent-
infringing products, including at the entry level, and flooded the market. These
actions have caused significant damage to Sonos.
33. Moreover, the revenue obtained from sale of Google’s hardware .”
devices presents an incomplete picture of the full value to Google, as Google is
selling the infringing products at a discount and/or as a “loss leader” to generate
future revenue. For instance, on information and belief, Google’s copying of
Sonos’s patented inventions has helped and/or will help Google generate significant
revenue from the use of Google’s hardware devices including advertising, data
collection, and search via the Google Wireless Audio Systems. As the New York
Post explained, “Amazon and Google both discounted their home speakers so
deeply over the holidays that they likely lost a few dollars per unit . . . hoping to
lock in customers and profit from later sales of goods and data about buying habits.”
Ex. 45. Similarly, News Without Borders explained that companies like Google are
using their “smart speaker” devices as “‘loss leader[s]’ to support advertising . . .
Ex. 28.
34. On information and belief, Google’s copying of Sonos’s patented
inventions has also helped and/or will help Google generate significant revenue
from driving its users to make follow-on purchases such as streaming music
subscriptions and retail purchases via the Google Wireless Audio Systems. For
example, an NPR “smart speaker” survey found that 28% of survey respondents
agreed that “[g]etting a Smart Speaker led [them] to pay for a music subscription
service,” and Google offers two such subscriptions – Google Play Music and
YouTube Music. Ex. 46 at p. 20. Likewise, the NPR survey also found that 26%
of respondents use their smart speakers “regularly” to “add [items] to shopping
list.” Id. at p. 15; see also, e.g., Ex. 28 (stating that companies like Google
are using their “smart speaker” devices as “‘loss leader[s]’ to support . . . e-commerce.”).
https://www.scribd.com/documen... [scribd.com]
Alsamixer is your friend. (Score:1)
Re: Alsamixer is your friend. (Score:5, Funny)
He'd better watch out, because Sonos also holds a patent on destroying perfectly functional hardware for profit.
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So what you are saying is that if someone rootkits your laptop, your mic can be hacked to spy on you? Why would you allow this?!!! You should disconnect the mic from the motherboard immediately!!!
It already has an Intel management engine root kit right in the proc, the old core 2 duo one that the linux kernel has semi blocked. Trick is to never use the thinkvantage blue button which will bypass the kernel and ping lenovo servers before boot expecting to get a reply from the old ntfs hack they put in Windows as a useless tech assistant for tech challenged business men to fall for.
If I remember correctly a Lenovo tech assistant could talk to you even if your copy of windows was hosed so the system b
Amazon too (Score:4, Insightful)
They are going after Amazon too. Sonos is claiming to own all implementations of multi-room audio - past, present and future. This is the evil of software patents. Software patents let you patent the concept, not the implementation. Software patents should be banned, it should not be possible to patent the concept of multi-room audio and then restrict all implementations including ones that haven't been built yet. Copyright protects Sonos from copying.
So now we are going to see million spent tearing into Sonos' patent with prior art research. Many of their patents will get invalidated since there is a long history for synchronized audio.
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The general problem is the patenting of black boxes. The whole idea behind patents is time-limited exclusive commercial protection in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention with a level of detail such that the invention can be replicated by someone skilled in the art. If an invention can't be replicated based solely on the information in the patent (along with general information that someone skilled in the art would know), then the invention is not patentable.
The specific problem with patents
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Software patents are kind of stupid anyways though because there are typically dozens of ways to accomplish a particular task. Even something as basic as sorting a sequence has dozens of different implementations as to how that can be accomplished. For this reason, it seems that any broad software patent would be trivial to defeat, simply be
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They patent things like "synchronize music based on time-stamps" without specifying a specific algorithm. Then attack everyone who uses any type of timestamp synchronization. The problem here is that timestamp are pretty much the only way you can wireless synchronize music or a standard IP transport. Other systems use custom radios that transmit clocks using proprietary signalling. Or you can run wires that carry the clocks. But if you are going to use industry standard networking timestamp is is the only
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I had the ability to play synchronized music in multiple rooms in my home across various Logitech Squeezebox speakers about a decade ago. I'm not 100% certain, but I think that pre-dates Sonos offering multi-room audio. I only switched because Logitech stopped supporting that ecosystem and I had a speaker that was having trouble staying on the network reliably (and Sonos has been better about that so far, over the couple years I've been using it). Google Assistant on the Sonos speakers has been nice too, si
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Re: Amazon too (Score:2)
Sonos are protectionist (Score:2)
Sonos seem like a very protectionist company to me. They recently offered a discount on upgrades if owners agreed to brick their current, perfectly working speakers first.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/... [engadget.com]
Heaven forbid they just offer a discount, or they lose a potential sale because someone else benefits from a donated unit!
It gives me the impression that the company is run by lawyers.
sounds familiar (Score:1)
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Sonos is switching from innovation to litigation. Seems to happen every time a past market leader starts to crumble. Our patent system is so perverted. It functions more to prop up collapsing old companies than it does to promote new ones.
The only speaker I will (Score:1)
Just my 2 cents
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That's easy without smart speakers. Two ways: pay for a music streaming service, or buy your own music and play it. I'm currently sitting by a pool in Cancun (thousands of miles from my home and my CDs), listening to excellent music playing on my bluetooth speaker: no ads, no problems (but several mojitos; an excellent day!).
Now if you want music, but don't want to pay anything (in money or ads), well, that's your problem that you can't expect smart speakers to help you with.
As to the patents: I'm rarel
First they brick their own devices ... (Score:3)
... now they're suing everybody in sight.
Investors will see this as a failing venture. Both Google and Amazon can drown them in legal fees.
Is Darryl McBride involved?
Sonos is Dead. (to me) (Score:2)
While I still have a stupid amount of Sonos gear, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone today. Their update policy/strategy has always been miserable for the consumer, and they seem to want to work their way up the food chain in a consumer-unfriendly way. (The damn thing has been essentially feature-complete for at least 5 years.) Updates serve to remove features rather than add, and get more data on their users.