The ITC declares Google infringed on audio tech patents held by Sonos [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The ITC declares Google infringed on audio tech patents held by Sonos [pdf]

usitc.gov

As far as I can tell, these are the patents mentioned in the document:

Method and apparatus for adjusting volume levels in a multi-zone system - https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2/en

System and method for synchronizing operations among a plurality of independently clocked digital data processing devices - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2/en

Multi-channel pairing in a media system - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219959B2/en

Playback device - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10209953B2/en

Playback device connection - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10439896B2/en

I'm a big fan of Sonos products but this ruling won't go through, right? Doesn't this effectively make Sonos the only legal manufacturer of wireless speaker systems? It's not like two speakers individually playing L and R channels is a novel concept... Plus it apparently bans imports on "Google Home smart speakers, Pixel phones and computers, and Google’s Chromecast streaming video device".

The patent system is so broken.

Yes, so broken that the original inventors of a product class had to spend $50 million on litigation in not even a court, but rather a quasi court in DC after a trillion dollar company stole their IP, because it's the last place where patent holders in the US get a reasonably fair shake.

Software patents are an anathema on innovation. I'd go so far as to say all corporate patents are a hindrance to innovation. We're not in the days of singular inventors profiting off their inventions, which I'm fine with, as when corporations become patent trolls or create such broad patents like "able to play back on a device," then it gets a little ridiculous.

In my opinion all intellectual property restrictions reduce the rate of innovation, with the sum total of all present day laws dramatically reducing the rate of innovate compared to what it could be. For example 3D printers were patented in 1989, then first sold for $50k in 1995, sold still under patent for $25k ten years later, then patents expired in 2008, within three years a decent printer was $1800, and ten years after patents expired they were $250 available worldwide. Today Prusa Research ships more 3D printers in three weeks than Stratasys sold for the first 20 years of their operation.

Imagine how much more productive mechanical engineers would have been if they had cheap 3D printers a decade sooner, and what the cumulative follow on effects would have been for the world. And then imagine what the economy would be like if everything moved that fast? It would change the nature of investment from less frequent massive investments to more frequent smaller investments as companies copied each other at will, but the rate of growth would be amazing! Think of how cheap we could make MRI machines and other medical imaging devices if this theory holds for that field.

Not to mention the extreme worldwide inequality perpetuated by intellectual property restrictions. How fast would the African continent develop if they were legally allowed to clone and copy the world's best manufacturing equipment and product designs.

Intellectual property is a disaster for humankind. So many people believe a fable about IP with no material basis in reality. We're told IP "encourages innovation" even when the actual material function of IP restrictions is to prohibit innovation around any patented idea.

On the other hand, if you're a startup founder with a brilliant new idea (say, some new way to synchronize audio across multiple speakers), why would you ever leave a cushy corporate job to build it if nothing protects you from large corporations copying everything you've made?

It seems, judging by how people have been complaining that their Google Homes have been doing worse, that maybe the system is working as intended and Google ought to pay for patent licenses to the people who first took the risk to build these multispeaker systems and proved that it was a good idea.

It's possible that the solution isn't to scrap intellectual property entirely but update the numbers to reflect the more innovative and interconnected world of 2022 instead of the 1600s when it was officially conceived.

I think you're missing the fact that our entire world is being slowed down by this system, and a few tweaks are not going to change that. Yes it is true that in the current system Google could ask for permission to license this one patent, but what about the broader implications of patents as I have laid out? What about the people all over the world living in worse conditions than necessary due to intellectual property restrictions? How many people could have been enjoying a worldwide free library if Project Gutenburg had been allowed to continue? How much cheaper would cars and auto repair be if manufacturers cloned and copied each other to settle on a set of standard designs, as has been done in 3D printers? How many lives would have been saved in Swaziland/Eswatini in the 1990's if the WTO had not outlawed low cost clones of effective AIDS medications? [1]

For every potential startup founder who will only work on their problem if they can get paid, there are IMO 100 people who will work on a problem because they care about solving it. I don't think we would lose much if those motivated only by profit had less incentive. And keep in mind they would still have first mover advantage. Plus huge companies often don't care about little corners of the market, and there is lots of room for companies to serve market needs the bigger companies are ignoring. But if another company wants to compete and they can actually do a better job? We are hurting society if we restrict their ability to do that.

[1] https://www.mmegi.bw/features/the-neoliberal-plague-aids-and...

I don't believe you're correct that intellectual property has slowed down progress.

Linux and the GNU project use copyright and they're doing well. Arguably better than the permissive BSDs for which copyright law might as well not exist. But even GNU/Linux falls far behind Windows and MacOS for regular desktop users.

Software is already the ultimate gift-able creation where you can make something for yourself and everyone else. It's cheap to make at home and it's free to distribute. Yet even here commercial products protected by IP are still far superior to things made by hobbyists just wanting to share with the world.

Medicines? Most biotechnologists I know are working at university research labs aiming to churn papers or they're working at a company that exists because of patent law. I don't know anyone researching new drugs in their spare time just to gift it to the world.

So I guess as a counterpoint, I know a hundred startup founders who made something looking to make a buck. I know zero people working on expensive technical problems purely because they care about solving it.

Literally every new drug approved between 2010 and 2016 came from NIH funding.

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329

The biotechnologists I know tell me "patent law is totally screwed up for biomed, but I guess because it works for traditional tech it's near impossible to remove". They're flabbergasted when I tell them tech says the inverse. Everywhere seems to have this idea that this other niche absolutely requires it.

> On the other hand, if you're a startup founder with a brilliant new idea (say, some new way to synchronize audio across multiple speakers), why would you ever leave a cushy corporate job to build it if nothing protects you from large corporations copying everything you've made?

The fact that your product will be on the market for years before competition arrives and you'll be a step ahead.

Instead, we're now stuck in a situation where jackboots for corporate lawyers break the neck of any startup innovator before they can even launch new products.

It’s true. Many pro-patent people say “think of the little guy”, but in reality the little guy regularly gets the shaft on matters of patent monopoly.

On the other hand without patents the little guys could copy existing products, make them better (big corporations are slow) and be paid for that.

I don't know about this. Without protection from copiers, there is no incentive for anyone to create a new mechanism or invention. It's true that patents can slow the growth of an invention after it is created, but you haven't accounted whether patents incentivize more inventions. That might (and probably does) outweigh the technological progress on a particular invention that a monopoly impedes.

> Without protection from copiers, there is no incentive for anyone to create a new mechanism or invention.

Totally untrue and this is one of the weird myths people have been taught, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Very likely this website is running on Linux, an OS created in part by corporate contributors but also in a huge way created by people who work while explicitly enabling free copies of their work. And of course with my 3D printer example, thousands of hackers from all over the world contributed to design improvements because they wanted to, sharing their work for free as open source. And then there's Bunnie Huang's wonderful story on the ground from a highly productive space with rampant copying:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

If you believe "there is no incentive" then none of the above would be true, but since it is true I would invite you to think critically about your starting assumptions.

No incentive might be hyperbolic, but this is an HN comment. I meant less incentive.

https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf

I would welcome a world where copyright restrictions ended 15 years from date of creation as this paper suggests, which would be a huge improvement from the status quo. Sadly the paper only seems to go over copyright.

But take the 3D printer example. Development by my subjective take seemed way more effective without patents. So why have them at all? More people did more work on them after the patents expired. Why have any period of limited growth if there will simply be more growth without the restrictions?

Well, I haven't proven completely that this concept is universally true, but I worry that "playing it safe" and just fighting to keep shorter restrictions is like loosening the rope around your neck when you really should remove it.

And your paper suggests they have a really nice formula ("99% confidence interval") for calculating the optimal term. But how would you calculate the optimal term for patents on AIDS medications during the height of the AIDS pandemic in Africa in the 1990's.[1] How much is each life worth? I question anyone who thinks their formula can calculate optimality on figures alone.

[1] https://www.mmegi.bw/features/the-neoliberal-plague-aids-and...

EDIT: I should underscore that there are a lot of natural reasons why someone would be in a position to invest in a particular innovation. We say we love free markets because natural incentives work best. No constraints but the laws of physics. IP restrictions are very unnatural.

The argument would probably be that without patents, what reason does companies have to disclose methods of operation? Everything would become a trade-secret.

With patents the deal is as follows: Tell us how you made it and we will make sure that noone else copies it for a while. This system allows for knowledge to be shared between competing entities. One of the requirements for a patent is literally "The descriptions must be sufficient to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains to make and use the same".

For medication, the reason why it can even go off-patent is because the patent exists in the first place. Without the patent, there would be no public information about how to make the medication.

I'm not saying that this is the case for all inventions. But I do think that patents have their place. The current form might however need revisiting.

Maybe everything would become a trade secret but given what is at stake I wouldn’t assume that to be true. We’ve seen in the open source world that collaboration can be a valuable tool for everyone involved. Even big industry players understand there are benefits to open source.

And for medication we see companies abusing the patent system, reformulating drugs and re-patenting them. Though there’s something rotten about the other parts of the system that make this worthwhile.

Yes, anyone who obtains a software patent is just a cheater, because they take advantage of the fact that now it is possible to obtain patents for things that could not be patented a half of century before.

If at the start of the computing industry it would have been possible to obtain the kind of software patents that are awarded now, nobody would have ever been able to write any programs without infringing patents, including those who now claim the right of forbidding to others to rediscover the same trivial methods for which they happened to file patent applications before others, mainly because nobody before them thought that such things are worthy of a patent.

If to their predecessors would have been granted the same kinds of software patents as today, none of those wanting to obtain software patents now could have been working in the computing industry, as it would have been much smaller.

Even the smallest physical design or computer program embodies numerous ideas that fortunately were discovered in a time when for anyone who discovered something new, the priority was to make it known to the public, without expecting many rewards besides the recognition of priority in advancement of science and technology.

So broken that the original inventors aren't even part of the conversation, because neither the plaintiff or defendant invented any of this.

> Method and apparatus for adjusting volume levels in a multi-zone system - https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2/en

Is this why I can’t change the volume on a Google Home speaker group anymore?

I'm with you 100% here.

It's unclear how often Googhomes receive updates, but at the beginning in 2019 my 9 Mini's worked great! But now for multiple speakers they are laggy and unreliable, sometimes just ending up in a neverending ding loop.

Unfortunate to buy a product such as this and have functionality and experience quality steadily decline thereafter.

Initially I was a huge fan and in love with the product.

Perhaps I should've known better, since Big-G isn't exactly known for long-term support of anything unless it still makes them torrents of money.

Sonos are in a similar boat, buy an older controller and the app will constantly nag you to upgrade, but not allow you to upgrade because the controller is "too old and no longer compatible".

I don't use speaker groups, but could possibly be related to this issue from Android 12 -- where it seems Google walked back, disabled, or pulled out previously present functionality, possibly related to this litigation: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/201546605?pli=1

I wonder if any of those cover switching devices. You used to be able to say, "Hey Google, move that to the kitchen," and whatever you were listening to would stop and continue in the kitchen. It still understands the command, but then fails with an error. That feature was something that I used every morning as I moved through the house getting ready for the day.

I can't point to a single thing that these devices do better than they did two years ago, but I can list several features that were important to me that are now either broken or missing.

I noticed this not working the other day as well.

Honestly, my feeling is that using Google Home is asking for trouble and frustration. It already barely works, but it's not hard to imagine some future where the company that built your front door lock is ordered to stop providing service by some court that finds it in violation of a patent.

Google has confirmed some of these changes are related to this case, yes: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/11/04/google-phones-ch...

Prior to this ITC ruling, Google had already received an injunction in Germany.

Behind closed doors, I like to ask CEOs these questions:

“What patents are holding you back?”

“What would you build right now if there were no restrictions from copyright/patents?”

There are some very surprising (caveat: not to most of HN) patents that are holding us back.

> System and method for synchronizing operations among a plurality of independently clocked digital data processing devices - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2/en

This one in particular seems way too broad. So... they have a patent on the concept of deducting latency from a message to synchronize clocks? (and then sending data with a timestamp for when it will play?)

I wonder if they keep their server times in sync with ntp.

Interesingly, none of the specific claims referenced in the decision have to do with clock synchronization, they all focus on the act of grouping speakers in some way and controlling them together.

Irrespective of the patent details, this is actually a fun and not at all straightforward hardware project to implement. I had a failed attempt at this in uni, and synchronizing audio across multiple computers (rasps) is a really cool challenge.

But did you pay the rent to Sonos while you were doing that project? It's, after all, their intelectual property now.

You don't know the year he/she went to University.

you do know that raspis were involved, so it can't be before 2012. However, AirFoil/AirPlay existed before that and could do this.

Hopefully big G won't find a way to weasel out now that they don't have as much executive favor with the US government as they used to.

Bear in mind this case is more than just Google using some common patents: Google worked with Sonos on a collaborative project as a way to gain access to internal details of how their technology worked, and then they stole it.

Remember the ITC is NOT a court, it's part of the executive branch. Their decisions are appealable to the federal circuit but they are effectively never stayed pending appeal (because there is already an appeals process built into the ITC).

There is an interesting counterintuitive game that is played where the defendant tries to get MORE of their products included in the exclusion order to make an appeal easier.

Sonos could have requested a general exclusion order which would bar ANY infringing product from entering the US, but they only requested a limited exclusion order against Google Home products.

Let the lobbying games begin... I am fairly confident that Biden will not overturn the ITC decision but you never know.

Google also counter sued Sonos over Google's patents in multiple jurisdictions and Sonos has made it clear to investors that this is all a fight for a settlement.

At some point it becomes worth it to put in the effort to try to get the Sonos patents invalidated, and some of them seem very broad. Hard to believe that some of those things were “invented” only in the last 20 years. Most inventions aren’t patented, so I’d speculate that probably almost all patents could be invalidated by someone dedicated with a team of experts to scour history for prior art.

There was nothing comparable to a modern multiroom smart speaker around in 2001, so they certainly were invented in the last 20 years. Whether that was by Sonos or by someone else, and whether these specific patents should have been granted is another question of course.

I remember musik in the 1990s at the restaurant I worked at. We had it in the kitchen and a different channel in the seating area. Turn a switch on the wall to change channels, if the kitchen and seating were on the same channel then they had music in sync.

Now this was an entirely hardwired system, and there was no remote. I don't know what sonos's patents are for, but the idea was in place and the difference is do it by wireless computer.

This particular patent specifically covers a mesh network of independent playback devices that can be dynamically rearranged into possibly overlapping zones, with the volume controls being on a separate device in the local network. That's pretty far removed from a simple hard-wired two-channel audio system.

I'm opposed to software patents in general so I also think this should not be patentable, but it's hard to deny that there's a ton of engineering effort required to implement such a system and its not just a matter of adding a few lines of code to an existing audio application.

Right. I'm not clear on what the patent covers, it can be anything from too broad to very specific. My opinion changes depending on what it covers.

Google will probably have to get the patents themselves removed, by proving prior work or such. Those patents are way too broad.

I wonder what Bose does, they have their own multiroom system. Do they license the patents from Sonos?

> Do they license the patents from Sonos?

IIRC Some other companies made agreements with Sonos to avoid suites (incl apple i blieve?), but sonos has claimed that google was bullying them over a number of things, including the claim that GAssistant only supports one assistant/wake word at a time, per contract, but alexa does not have this limitation. But thats apparently why the android app is worse, they don't support casting, and they're focusing on the apple/alexa ecosystem (airplay, etc).

The major feature the Android app lacks is the "Trueplay" tuning. It relies on a phone to generate and record a sound to map out a room's acoustics, then optimizes the Sonos speaker's output for the room. I've always been wondering if the lack of Trueplay support is due to shortcomings in Android's audio APIs or something like this.

Things like that usually require knowing the hardware characteristics of the device itself as well as some form of calibration range. For iOS Sonos can just buy (or borrow) a couple of iphones every year to generate that data. Doing the same on Android gets a lot harder thanks to the more diverse hardware ecosystem.

The "novelty" (idk how novel it is really, but they present it as such) is not in speakers playing the same audio or L/R at the same time, but individual autonomous playback devices being grouped and ungrouped, so that they can be controlled as a unit when grouped.

"Simple Jack panel, but computer controlled" is not novel and should not be patentable.

Yeah, I'm absolutely not arguing this should be patentable. It seems like they are obvious and marginal (at best) changes to preexisting systems, even if they were the first ones to describe them. Still, the patents are not as boundlessly broad as some commenters here seem to think, for instance they clearly exclude hard-wired multispeaker systems.

To those downvoting: Am I wrong here? Not defending the patents, I just want people to stop tearing down strawmen instead of the real thing.

This sounds an awful lot like what I've been able to do with digital theatre sound systems for a long time, so I don't think it's novel.

Sonos has worked hard since its founding to quietly amass an impressive stable of streaming audio IP.

It's not a matter of "if" anyone is infringing on their IP. It's a matter of "who can they reasonably win a ruling against".

Where is the Logitech/Squeezebox/Slim Devices patent war chest here? They have had volume on multi zone prior to 2012, syncing audio playback devices together, as well as having multichannel audio going to different squeezeboxes. These all seem to have at least prior art behind them and thus are indefensible.

Is this why it’s seemingly impossible to have synced wireless audio that’s not AirPlay or Sonos?

This is the reason the physical volume buttons on Android 12 on Pixel phones no longer adjust Chromecasted music volume, unless you are in the music app in question.

Adjusting Spotify cast on the Google Home used to be so easy...

https://www.androidpolice.com/google-had-to-remove-cast-volu...

> This is the reason the physical volume buttons on Android 12 on Pixel phones no longer adjust Chromecasted music volume, unless you are in the music app in question.

Are you f'ing kidding me? This has been driving me nuts, I assumed it was just another stupid Android bug that would eventually be silently patched. It's so annoying how functionality like this can be removed without a peep, at least inform me if you're going to do this.

(It's not just Pixel phones, same problem with my Samsung A51 and I just got a brand new Motorola phone with the same problem).

Yes, this drove me nuts. And was even more annoying because Google Support were totally unaware and acted like morons - it was about 30 minutes before I realised they had no clue what they were investigating and were just blindly plodding along, at which point I told them I'd give up. Weirdly they spammed me a few more times to try to get me to come back to resolve it (without giving any indication they knew any more).

They could have licensed the patent, I know crazy talk, but we never see what the licensing arrangements would have been

The patent for what? Connecting a volume button to the volume of something?

January 2022 Pixel update fixes Chromecast controls for most apps on Android 12

https://www.realmicentral.com/2022/01/06/january-2022-pixel-...

Google have just (in the last hour) announced changes to the behaviour of speaker groups "due to a legal ruling".

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Blog/Upcoming-Speaker...

It sounds like an absolute nightmare for users, and if I was affected I would be demanding a refund for every affected device, as they clearly are no longer functioning as expected at the time of purchase.

It's fun those automatic updates which are only there for security reasons isn't it?

It's so hard to imagine the entire industry being held hostage like this.

My second thought is that this radically enhances the need for good IoT standards. Right now many devices are built to grant Google & Google alone the capability to control & orchestrate. Our devices are all vulnerable to legal attach because Google is the sole arbiter of control over our systems, and no one else has much of a say in how these devices run or operate; their capabilities are not up for general use.

By making devices which are more API centric, by having them expose what capabilities they have, in a networked fashion, not solely controlled by Google, there would be the possibility for other folks to step in & try to navigate & make offerings here. The risk to product owners would be diffused, there would be more resilience in what would be possible with devices, rather than this being such a 1 vs 1 battle. Things like group volume control seem like ideal candidates for tech that even a bone-headed laymen could implement in a couple lines of code, if specifications like the upcoming Matter IoT specifications were available & in use.

Some of the capabilities covered by these patents may need to be baked somewhat closer to the firmware. But for many of them, it feels like the rigid, fixed, top-down control system we've relied on is an epic legal vulnerability, one Sonos is driving a mac truck through. Letting our devices be scriptable and controllable would be safer, healthier, & help shirk off such flamboyant legal assaults. Devices should be general purpose, scriptable, because anything else is unsafe & unfit for users.

It is very routine to license patents

We have no insight into what a licensing agreement would have looked like to judge

We also have no idea if google just opted to not pay

I cant hop on the “hostage industry” train without that detail

Im uninterested in my devices & functionality i use being ever subject to legal brawls, these ones & in general.

Spotify is under no obligation to offer Fair Reasonable and Non-discrimatory license agreements. To say that license agreements are routine ignores the other half the time that agreements dont work out easily. A patent holder can hold the entire world back at their pleasure. In this case, over a couple line shell scripts we could teach middleschoolers in Hour of Code day.

I have little sympathy for what feels like ambiguous legal murk you've layered over my concern. These particulars seem uninteresting amid what seems like yet another nimwitted IP fuck up that idoot grade patents were handed out to bloodthirsty IP robber barons. Once again consumers are in the crosshair. And this time we cannot seek alternate remedy, our devices are all beholden & bound up, controlled by solitary companies, vulnerable to legal assault. This is an unhealthy technical ecosystem, & it's unhealth has made it subject to wide forms of cruel & vicious legal attack on endless fronts, from an incompetent legal system.

Also true.

I would be open to an attempt at uniform licensing agreements, or some kind of regulatory approval on the licensing arrangements with comparative licenses considered.

I agree this is desirable for users, but platform lock in is a desirable property for most of the major device manufacturers. How do we motivate Sonos/Google/Apple/Philips Hue/Amazon/etc to actually build in better support for open standards? (small manufacturers already have that incentive, but they're a small part of the market)

It's only a half-serious suggestion, but we could point them to the story of how accepting MIDI for electronic music device interoperability in the 1980s led to a massive explosion in that industry in which everyone benefitted.

To start with we need one standard. (xkcd fans will note that I said one not 15). Until there is one good standard (good meaning no way to misread it so your device isn't compatible with anyone else - this is hard)

In the US congress can set standards of weights and measures, it isn't hard to see how other things could be mandated based on that constitutional text.

I'm not a patent lawyer, but can anyone explain to me how this wasn't already covered by either part of multi-zone systems in the 80s/90s, or part of literally every single room correction tech since the late 90s? Sonos didn't exist when this technology was invented.

Edit: Surprised I'm getting downvoted for this. All the patents listed are things multi-zone and room correcting systems already do. Look at technology built by Dirac or Audyssey for latency-correcting multiple clock domains; they already do it. Audyssey, Dirac, and Sonos all started around the same time, around 20 years ago, and all base their technology on the companies and engineers who came before them, and Audyssey and Dirac have solutions that are lightyears ahead of Sonos.

How does Sonos have valid patents here when its identical to what two better companies have done at the same time, or worse, what companies before them have already done? Something does not sound right here.

The ITC cant invalidate patents so it was never part of the question

ITC can only look at imports and damages - aka lack of profit split - where they were due

And they found they were due, given the existence of the patent valid during the time in question

Feel free to correct me I’m wrong about the ITC

The ITC can definitely adjudicate invalidity.

Does anyone have a link saying either way here? Just want to be sure.

"Definitely" -- how do you know this? Citation please.

I actually don't know for certain and I was in Google Patent Litigation (as tech advisor). I never had a case before the ITC so I can't say 100%, but AFAIK only the PTO or a regular Federal court can declare a patent invalid.

But maybe they can say "well, this will probably be declared invalid, so we're going to stay the order." Like a German court can do. So please tell us one way or the other.

https://www.itcblog.com/488-did-you-know-determinations-of-p...

"Infringement, validity, and/or enforceability" constrained to section 337, per the above legal analysis.

IANAL

However the Federal Circuit has held that “ITC findings neither purport to be, nor can they be, regarded as binding interpretations of the U.S. patent laws in particular factual contexts.

OK, we're splitting hairs, but an ITC determination that your patent is invalid doesn't render it useless in other contexts.

You can, and everyone always does, litigate invalidity before ITC. (I am an IP litigator who has done it.) Note that the ITC cannot itself invalidate patents like district courts do, but they can--and often do--decline to issue an exclusion order because they believe the patent at issue is invalid.

See answer to the other poster.

For what it's worth, this isn't limited to invalidity. For example, ITC findings that a product infringes also are not binding on courts. The reason for all this is that the ITC is an administrative agency rather than an Article III tribunal.

I'm also not a patent lawyer, but for example the multi-room volume control patent specifically covers a mesh network of independent playback devices that can be dynamically rearranged into possibly overlapping zones, with the volume controls being on a separate device in the local network.

I would be surprised if that already existed in the 90s? I'd actually already be surprised if network-connected speakers were around back then, let alone all the mesh networking stuff.

Is Sonos suing Apple as well? Seems like the tech in dispute is also used by HomePods and AirPlay.

I can't quickly find anything about Sonos suing Apple, and in fact Apple was selling Sonos speakers in their stores in 2020 [1]. What is the deal?

[1] https://www.imore.com/apple-begins-sell-sonos-speaker-compan...

Google explicitly partnered with Sonos in a collaborative project to find out how Sonos' tech worked, then copied it. It's plausible that Sonos feels Google explicitly stole from them, and Apple built something else.

Or, empowered by a win against Google, they file suit against Apple tomorrow. No reason to be in two high cost lawsuits at the same time.

Any source to back up this claim?

This sounds unusually stupid, even for Goggle - because they could've just poached a few engineers and it would be less risky than public, high-profile corporate espionage.

It's a core part of Sonos' complaint, I am sure you could find it in the legal filings, but this article about a preliminary injunction against Google in Germany about the same issue starts with that detail in particular: https://chromeunboxed.com/google-sonos-lawsuit-2021

As stupid as this sounds, this is usual Google MO coming all the way from the top with both Sergey Brin and Larry Page involved in person

"In February of 2008, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page visited Space Data’s headquarters with as many as 10 other Google executives in tow"

https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alpha...

https://9to5google.com/2017/07/10/project-loon-patents/

https://www.law.com/therecorder/2019/07/29/google-settles-ip...

if the patent is legit, it would explain the invention and there would be no need to collaborate to steal the tech

Why would Google need to partner/collaborate to steal what would be publicly described in a patent?

My guess would be that the patent lacks some of the implementation details, and allowed them to create a product that worked as well easily. Bear in mind, most generic-sounding software patents aren't going to give you any actual code to look at.

In fact, almost none of them. It's not required, although it ought to be.

Isn't the point of the patent that you share a technology in exchange for a temporary monopoly? If the patent doesn't have enough information to implement the technology it should be considered invalid.

That is the point but patents are written in legalese, not something engineers understand. I have talked to a few engineers who have patents and none of them could design the thing from the patent language - and invented it in the first place.

I don't know how to solve this problem, but it does seem like it is a problem worth solving.

This is definitely the original intent and idea of patents. I don't think it's functionally what happens today though.

I think I'd be much happier with software patents if they were required to come with working code. Companies would likely be less willing to file their patents if they essentially were required to source available the code.

In practice here, Google is getting a patent infringement judgment, but it almost certainly included some trade secret theft, since the details of the patent aren't enough to reproduce the technology. We have an outcome that is reasonable, but I think based on some legal concepts that could use an update.

Good point. This is called "written description" or "enablement." I researched this in some depth and even have a unfinished paper on the subject. To me it's the silver bullet to ending software patents, or one of the bullets.

The legal standard, believe it or not, is that you don't even need a detailed flowchart, let alone source code. The actual code is something anyone skilled in the art can do, sorta like a lab tech determining the exact temperature and pressure to use to manufacture your chemical compound.

I was in some informal discussion in Google Legal, and someone stated unequivocally, "source code will never be required in patent descriptions."

You have to ask "Why TF not?" I think the answer, at least the non-quiet part () is "the PTO is not equipped to judge your source code's adequacy. Any skilled coder can write the code."

( cynicism alert) the quiet part is "that would put us all out of business."

It's totally reasonable to require that a patentee checks his source code and build files into GitHub or some other repository. Probably the PTO should contract with someone to build a repository and they will operate it.

The lawyers and politicians and PTO will never do this on their own. Software engineers will have to organize and force it through. A lengthy flame on HN will not accomplish that.

Apple has a whole system for patent licenses that they definitely use for third party sales in their stores, and ostensibly is involved in any Apple hardware and software protocols in jurisdictions with tight patent controls. Part of the idea of the lightning connector is keeping that sweet patent royalty money rolling in after switching from the (also patented, and also a golden goose) old 30pin connector. The patents on AirPlay are rolled up into the same program. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a preexisting cross licensing agreement with Sonos.

"We’re suing Google and we’d sue Amazon, too, if we had the resources to do it. They’re stealing our technology and trying to squeeze us out of business."

Seems like they'd want to follow up with an Amazon suit if this one is successful.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/8/21056851/amazon-dave-limp-...

Apple and sonos have a much healthier relationship, and supposedly they struck a mutually beneficial deal after the g suit started.

I'm guessing Apple paid the rent to Sonos or the leadership of Sonos let them have it for free.

Sonos is a crappy company, and Google are idiots for copying them in such a blatant way. Mixed feelings.

Tbf I'm not particularly bothered, Google Cast for music streaming has for me at least been pretty poor.

Apple has made AirPlay more open than Google has. Google Cast regularly takes 30 seconds to start streaming YouTube Music, where as AirPlay starts within 3 seconds. At least with AirPlay I can use shairplay to emulate a speaker.

Therefore I bought Sonos speakers over Google Cast speakers for use from my Android phone.

Note how Google got a bunch of insight into Sonos tech, then turned around and re-implemented it. That's pretty low behavior.

So Google buys Sonos by the end of the week?

But i like my sonos products and want them to work for more than another few weeks... and theres no sonos chat app so why would they want sonos really?

It’s me cynically suggesting that they’ll do that just to get rid of this annoyance. That’s what Facebook and many other big companies would do. I don’t know if Google has done in the past but it wouldn’t surprise me.

> It’s me cynically suggesting that they’ll do that just to get rid of this annoyance.

Yes, i was just making a joke about how google kills things.

> That’s what Facebook and many other big companies would do.

I feel like this is pretty common across industries, idk why FB gets called out?

> I don’t know if Google has done in the past but it wouldn’t surprise me.

I can't remember anything they bought after losing a suit, but they did this with Moto, and i think also Kodak.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/08/google-to-buy-motoro...

"theres no sonos chat app" ... yet.

Something something sonos old gen products being bricked...

It was a bad move on their part, but fwiw they walked that plan back, and it was opt-in from the start.

Patents are horrible. Can you really look me in the face and tell me that controlling the volume of speakers independently of each other is some kind of special idea - not even a concrete product, but so innovative that the very concept deserves an exclusive license and millions in damages from those that dare implement a common-sense UX control?

If you can, let me know where I can sign up for free Sonos products for astroturfing too.

It tells people to not bother inventing anything, everything “legally” has already been invented by people with more money and lawyers than you.

Ignoring the HN-pleasing "Patents are horrible" (to which I agree btw), the patents are very specifically about the opposite of independent volume control: They are about setting up groups of speakers which can be controlled together.

Sure. Replace "independently" with "dependently" in my comment. That distinction changes nothing about the novelty of such a system.

The volume knob on your stereo from 1960 controls both the left and right speaker volume, at the same time. Woah.

Sorry for having "someone is slightly wrong on the internet" syndrome, of course it does not change your point about an overly broad patent.

How could such a simple and obvious concept be patented?

Yes, I think there is value in the patent system but the concept of what qualifies as "novel" and "non-obvious" seems to be way off.

The patent system is, if you strip off all the fluff, a mechanism for ensuring that inventions are communicated to a larger audience. At least that was the original intent.

And then the world changed. A lot.

It is easy to forget that because we live in a time where this has ceased to be a problem. There is no lack of invention and creativity. Those who invent things have trivial access to communicating their idea to a global audience. Inventing something and then not communicating it one way or another isn't that common anymore. And if you make something and try to keep the secret sauce secret, there has never been a time where we collectively have been better at rapidly reverse engineering or re-inventing.

I think patents provide no value to society. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about this for a handful of areas. Including software and pharmaceuticals. It started with me thinking patents were a good idea - and then someone asked me questions that didn't have easy answers that could easily shown to be unambiguously true.

I've spent time discussing with people who were involved in designing new, patented drugs, and when you bore right down into it the argument tends to boil down to "patents are important because much of how the industry works is tied to how patents work".

You end up in circular arguments.

Yes, the economy of drugs would change if there were no patents. For the most part, that would be highly desirable. Not least because it would tie up a lot less money in work that produces few to no benefits for public health. Like developing new patentable versions of high volume drugs without actually making any progress in a medical sense. And it would be nice if we could reallocate resources to invest more in developing the kinds of drugs that are highly unattractive today, but are critically important. Like antibiotics. Or drugs that affect predominantly poor people in developing economies.

Sure, it provides value to those who have patents AND, much more importantly, the funds required to defend them. Patents protect incumbents - not the underdog challenger. Let's at least be mature enough to admit that. And if you are not a well funded corporation and you think your patents protect you from well funded parties who want to use your IPR, you are, at best mistaken.

I doubt the patent system has societal value. But I also doubt that this is something we can get rid of. Because monied incumbents are the only ones who stand to lose. And they own the politicians.

Yes, because at one point in time that was an innovation. You said it yourself.

Where did I say that was an innovation?

And if it was an innovation at some point in time, I insist it was the year stereo was invented and the concept was just as invalid as a patent as it is today. Of course you expect the volume of your Left and Right channel to be controlled by the same volume knob.

This patent is like a car manufacturer patenting the idea of controlling all your direction with a single steering wheel, and all the other manufacturers are forced to implement individual steering wheels for each tire. It's just absurd.

Your next metaphor is worse. If a steering system wan an invention/innovation than it deserves ip rights.

What are you on? Should everything be equally competed in society, even after invention?

It was an invention. I'm into historic tractors, there are a number of interesting steering controls that companies played with in the 1800s. I've seen a tractor that you controlled with reigns (like a horse). I've seen tractors where there was levers not a wheel. The wheel quickly won out (AFAIK the wheel predates the ones I listed).

Today steering seems obvious, but only because a lot of inventors tried a lot of things some of which were bad ideas.

People have been controlling the volume of multiple-room speakers with wired connections, with a single volume knob, for 50 years. The idea that "oh wait someone might want to do this with wireless speakers too" is an innovation that needs to be given to the first person to think of it as a monopoloy? (And does anyone really think they were really the first person to think of it just cause they have a patent?)

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