Sonos Wins $32.5 Million Patent Infringement Victory Over Google (theverge.com) 23
Google has been ordered to pay Sonos $32.5 million after a jury verdict found that Google's smart speakers and media players infringed on one of Sonos' patents. The Verge reports: The legal battle started in 2020 when Sonos accused Google of copying its patented multiroom audio technology after the companies partnered in 2013. Sonos went on to win its case at the US International Trade Commission, resulting in a limited import ban on some of the Google devices in question. Google has also had to pull some features from its lineup of smart speakers and smart displays.
Last August, Google sued Sonos over allegations that the audio company infringed on Google's smart speakers and voice control technology. This most recent trial started earlier this month, with Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda telling Reuters at the time that the case pertains to "some very specific features that are not commonly used" and that Sonos "mischaracterized our partnership and technology." Neither Google nor Sonos immediately responded to The Verge's request for comment.
Sonos didn't come out of the case completely victorious, however, as the jury decided that Google's Home app didn't infringe on a separate patent filed by Sonos. The judge also told jurors to "disregard a $90 million damages estimate from a Sonos expert witness, saying he had decided that some of the evidence provided was inadmissible," Law360 reports.
Last August, Google sued Sonos over allegations that the audio company infringed on Google's smart speakers and voice control technology. This most recent trial started earlier this month, with Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda telling Reuters at the time that the case pertains to "some very specific features that are not commonly used" and that Sonos "mischaracterized our partnership and technology." Neither Google nor Sonos immediately responded to The Verge's request for comment.
Sonos didn't come out of the case completely victorious, however, as the jury decided that Google's Home app didn't infringe on a separate patent filed by Sonos. The judge also told jurors to "disregard a $90 million damages estimate from a Sonos expert witness, saying he had decided that some of the evidence provided was inadmissible," Law360 reports.
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Do republicans really wake up in a pool of sweat nightly screaming SOROS!
He lives rent free in their heads. SDS at its best.
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Do republicans really wake up in a pool of sweat nightly screaming SOROS!
No, but their Democrat wives ,ight wake up screaming ELON! ELON!
Really? How did it not get thrown out as obvious? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I understand the patent correctly, it basically amounts to a patent on having preset configurations that set a bunch of remote speakers to particular volume level and take input from a particular source and route it to specific destinations.
Unless I'm missing something, this patent consists of four significant parts expressed in various ways:
They did all of the things that a normal audio amplifier or routing mixer has done for the last fifty years, but instead of wires, they presumably sent low-latency UDP traffic to an endpoint to make it start playing audio, and synchronized the bit clocks on various devices using some non-described network protocol so that they output the audio buffers synchronously.
That said, that they left out all the details, like the low-latency UDP part, how the synchronization works, etc. so I'm literally guessing about the nature of the invention based on how I would implement it if I were asked to build what they are talking about. They don't explain how *anything* is done, as far as I can tell. There's nothing about how the synchronization works — only that it happens. There's just a bunch of meaningless gibberish about how one device tells another device that a secondary output device is now going to be synchronized to it, in various combinations, plus vague nonsense about possible scene configurations (e.g. an evening scene or whatever).
This is a patent that is so completely information-free underneath the almost impenetrable legalese that at least at first glance, it appears to have no real value in terms of what patents are supposed to do, which is documenting how an invention works and contributing to the state of the art. But at first glance, I would say that they basically are just implementing Dolby Digital (1986) over a packet-switched network, and that the only thing potentially novel is their synchronization mechanism, which this patent doesn't even describe.
I'm seriously struggling to understand how this patent withstood a challenge on its merits. The only reason this wasn't done in home speakers decades ago is because sending audio over Wi-Fi wasn't practical until recently, so having separate synchronized amplifiers in individual consumer-grade speakers over Wi-Fi wasn't really feasible. I'm firmly of the opinion that if the invention that your patent covers is a natural evolution of existing concepts, and if the only thing even slightly novel or non-obvious is the need to do it in the first place, your patent should not be awarded.
What am I missing? Where's the actual meat of this patent, where they tell how they did this? What was so novel about this that is worth enough money to feed every homeless person in San Francisco for four months?
Patents should really just not exist at this point. When they began allowing obfuscated crap like this, the whole benefit to society from patents evaporated. So why are we still awarding them?
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https://patentimages.storage.g... [googleapis.com]
The claims are pretty hard to read for sure.
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Perhaps the 27 pages of references that detail the state of the art- you know, that thing that someone is supposed to be aware of, having ordinary skill in the art, when we test whether the disclosure is enabling- that probably
You clearly didn't read it, so you don't know if it's 27 pages of useful background information, or irrelevant bullshit thrown at the examiners to make them bored.
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Again, dumbass, shut the fuck up about stuff you've no clue about.
For instance, knowledgeable people can immediately identify "useful background information" and know that it is not "irrelevant bullshit thrown at the examiners to make them bored": it's the shit marked with an asterisk as being cited by the examiner.
Why double down on how clueless you actually are?
If the whole thing is so impenetrable that nobody can actually figure out what they're talking about, then:
If I, as someone with decades of experience in the software industry, who has read many, many patents over the
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It's not so impenetrable. Go actually read it, don't assume you can skim it.
Every single paragraph hurts my head, because everything is so thoroughly obfuscated by using a dozen words where one would suffice. And that is as somebody who has done a decent amount of UI design, a decent amount of low-level work with audio and related hardware, etc. This one is truly awful.
Regardless of whether YOU can find something novel, the Examiner did.
Maybe, but probably not [researchgate.net]. About 70.5% of patents get approved, but 58% of patents get overturned outright when the patent holders bring them to trial, and only 25% of patent cases are actually won outright. So any
Yamaha AV systems (Score:3)
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A studio master mixer console also achieves the same outcome.
Up to a point, yes, though you're usually limited to a mix bus and a couple of aux buses, so there are limits to what you can do. (With modern digital boards, this might not be the case anymore; I've never dealt with one.) But that's why I pointed out the example of video routing mixers, where we could arbitrarily patch inputs to outputs, have specific sets that overrode all or part of a configuration, etc.
For example, you could have your default configuration, then have a configuration that switches one
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The USPTO gets paid when you apply, again when you reapply, and again when the patent is granted. Then they get paid AGAIN when someone gets the information they need to challenge the patent, and AGAIN when they actually challenge the patent, and they get paid AGAIN if you successfully challenge the patent and file your own patent...
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Even an invalid patent is published and thus serves as prior art.
Only if it actually contains enough information about the invention to be more than an unreadable gibberish description of what the invention does. :-)
The USPTO is proof (Score:2)
That patents need not be nonobvious, original, or particularly clever. All they need are trolls with wallets to pay lawyers behind them.
You too can patent 7 + 4 and shakedown any company that uses math.
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