The American multinational technology company, Google, is again suing Sonos (an American developer and manufacturer of audio products) by alleging Patent Infringement. It seems to be a never-ending legal fight series between the two tech companies in question. The two new lawsuits filed by Google focus on multiple patents involving keyword detection, charging using technologies invented by Google, and figuring out what speaker from a group should respond to the keyword.
Both the lawsuits have been filed at the US District Court for the Northern District of California. As per a report, Google has accused Sonos of violating seven of its patents on the products, including Sonos One, Arc, Beam, Move, and Roam.
Google spokesperson, José Castañeda, said in a recent statement delivered that instead of competing based on innovation and product quality, Sonos has decided to compete in the court of law and initiated a misleading and aggressive campaign against Google’s products, that too at the expense of their shared customers. He further said that Google prefers innovation over litigation; however, Sonos’ actions have left the company with no choice other than to defend its technology and challenge Sonos’ clear and continued infringement of its patents.
The search engine giant, according to Castañeda, has plans to take these complaints against Sonos to the US International Trade Commission in the coming future. It shall ask the Commission to impose a ban on any product infringing upon the seven patents of Google mentioned in the lawsuits filed.
In the documents submitted with the lawsuits filed, Google has targeted the recently launched Sonos voice assistant by saying that it owns the patents for enabling the voice assistant technology and offering improvements to the durability, reliability, and efficiency of voice-controlled and battery-powered devices and Sonos is using them without seeking its permission.
According to Google, Sonos has recently come up with its Sonos Voice Control feature, which controls its products in a power-efficient way by using ‘hotwords’ and manages the battery charging of its products – with the help of technologies invented by Google.
Sonos, in response, said that all this is Google’s arm-twisting tactic against it for criticizing the search engine giant’s monopolistic methods and ways.
The Chief Legal Officer of Sonos, Eddie Lazarus, said that Google has previously sued Sonos globally, and Sonos has emerged victoriously in every decided case. He further said that the courts have repeatedly valid Sonos’ claims as per which Google is infringing upon its core patented smart speaker technology. According to him, the new lawsuits filed by Google are an intimidation tactic for retaliating against Sonos for speaking out against the search engine giant’s monopolistic practices. He even mentioned that Google is avoiding paying Sonos a fair royalty for the near around 200 patents it is presently infringing upon and grinding down a smaller competitor whose innovations and inventions it has misappropriated. Lazarus firmly believes that Google shall not succeed in the said two lawsuits.
For quite a while now, both Sonos and Google have been in a state of quarrelsome disagreement about wireless speaker tech patents. Sonos achieved a massive victory earlier this year when the US Trade Commission stated that Google did infringe upon Sonos’ patents about casting and group speaker controls. Consequently, Google had to remove some functionality – such as a single group volume control for a set of speakers – from its offerings.
A California judge, quite recently, decided in favor of the search engine giant by canceling a Sonos patent concerning transferring the playback queue of tracks from one speaker to another. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com
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