Google speakers are losing features due to Sonos patent infringement | Hacker News Reader

Google speakers are losing features due to Sonos patent infringement

howtogeek.com

2 pointsamcoastal4 comments

Why do people always get hosed?

Google can totally afford to license, and should.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2/en

* why is this even a patent? Gah!... Stupidness we've had volume knobs that affected multiple speakers since approximately two seconds after the first radio that had more than one speaker was created. We had a house with late 1960's multi-room intercom with a neat control panel that had "multizone technology"

* google should not license this shit, they should throw a few million into continuing fight their suit with sonos, hopefully driving them into oblivion and/or getting that stupid patent declared invalid.

* if they fail at that, they should just buy them or take them over outright and immediately fire every single person that worked there.

Note: it doesn't matter to me if sonos is the "good guy" and that google is very certainly the bad guy in some other context, which I'm sure is the case. If sonos wants to act like a patent troll that also produces smart speakers, then they should be wiped off the face of the galaxy with as little sympathy as possible.

>The detailed description of the invention is presented largely in terms of procedures, steps, logic blocks, processing, and other symbolic representations that directly or indirectly resemble the operations of data processing devices coupled to networks. These process descriptions and representations are typically used by those skilled in the art to most effectively convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art. Numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, it will become obvious to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well known methods, procedures, components, and circuitry have not been described in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring aspects of the present invention.

This is why so many of us oppose software patents.

I agree with you, and balanced sound systems are all over the place. Seems like they added network and called it "UNIQUE"

Yeah, I wrote the initial comment in haste, actually thinking there was some meaningful patent in play. Having read that one?

Yeah, fuck 'em.

> Seems like they added network and called it "UNIQUE"

Yep, that was exactly my read on it.

Problem #2 is google then. But one step at a time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com