Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
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Not here to defend Google, but how can something trivial like that even be patentable?
It wasn't just rounded corners. It was a combination of design features for a specific device that, among other things, included rounded corners.
This wasn’t two companies that happened to come up with the same design, this was just blatant copying of pointless aesthetic details, which is illegal.
Which is very relevant in this case as in the court Samsung's lawyer couldn't tell iPad and Galaxy Tab apart from 10 feet away: https://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/14/samsung_lawyer_co...
Whether it's appropriate to use sharp or rounder corners for a given tool is common knowledge dating back thousands of years. In this case it's based on grip, handling, taking it out of a pocket, not piercing that pocket, coexisting with other items in bag, etc.
Take say the blackberry bold 9930 it’s bottom is a single curve from edge to edge without any flat parts. Considering these phones had a single button at the bottom a curve like that would have simply saved material without compromising screen size and better fit into peoples hands. There are actually a host of odd ruggedized smartphones like: https://www.catphones.com/en-us/cat-s48c-smartphone/ Even for laptops you get a lot of odd edges look at the HP’s Omen X 2S.
Don’t want any of those looks? It’s fine there where plenty of other things they could have done to differentiate these phones like say volume buttons next to the center one, or a back button for web pages etc. It’s only when you copy everything that it’s no longer your style it’s Apple’s.
Net result in the US: The jury trial for damages concluded on May 24, 2018, awarding Apple $539 million, which includes $399 million for damages of Samsung's products sold that infringed on the patents. Germany acted much faster and simply blocked Galaxy 10.1 sales.
Hell, even my kindle basically looks like this. My TV looks like this except for the rounded corners (which it doesn’t need because it’s not intended to be held).
IMO, these designs seem geared to upselling cases rather than anything approaching an ideal.
The ability to throw a case on it is a feature, not a misdesign. I don’t want a bulky tablet to protect the corners. I’ll put a case on it for that. I happen to not want that so I have a very minimal case on all my devices.
Every version of the current base/mini/pro model iPad actually has quite a wide bezel in part because people lose so much of the front screen to their cases/hands. https://www.apple.com/ipad-10.2/ You simply can’t comfortably cup them the way you can a phone.
Bezels are wide to accommodate hands, though, not cases. Good cases can obscure nearly none of the bezel.
An integrated 5-10 grams on a 487 gram iPad could give you a lot of protection. That’s about the point where they should survive a 4 foot drop onto wood/tile/concrete from any angle. I am not saying that’s going to prevent everyone from buying a case, but if close to 80% of the market is buying a case perhaps they could simply make something people would be less concerned about.
I am not saying your wrong, it’s just I don’t understand your point.
It protects from scratches and very light falls, such as being bumped off a table. A drop from chest height would be iffy.
Is it? What about non-rounded corners?
You will then be surprised that car manufacturers often engage in court battles against Chinese knock-offs.
They had to restrict the icons into colored because there was prior art for B&W. The entire thing is a farce.
I don't think there has been prior art, once you consider all the irrelevant details. There very likely isn't, because if there was, Samsung would have used it.
IMO Apple had a copyright, maybe, it shouldn't have been patentable though. Design != technology so shouldn't be patentable.
For one, it lasts forever.
But isn't that what computers are supposed to be for; networking and connecting devices so that one can control them easily?
There's a reason orgs like the Alliance for Open Media -- a Google-led initiative -- use licensing that explicitly grants you use of the patents owned by member orgs, but also explicitly revoke those if you sue any of them over a patent claim.
It also works as a way to keep incumbents in power. Say Google has 100 important mobile OS patents and Apple has 100 important mobile OS patents. It makes sense for them to cross-license. But a new mobile OS entrant has nothing of interest to Google or Apple and so no way to get access to those important patents.
The problem with that is that we the customers end up as collateral damage.
I'm not taking Sonos' part here though: like other people here pointed out, I'm pretty sure they patented some very obvious things which they should imo never have gotten a patent for in the first place.
edited to add this link for reference: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/12/10/the-forced-switch-t...
Even after that, I believe Google only used their patents defensively: they'd only sue company X for patent violations if company X sued Google for patent violations. When I worked there, that was the impression the company gave off, and some initiatives like "Alliance for Open Media" the other commenter mentioned are in line with that.
I don't think Google is unique in this: older tech companies seem to have more aggressive patent strategies, whereas newer (.com era and onward) seem to dislike software patents but are forced to play the game by more aggressive companies and patent trolls. It's a drag on the industry IMO.
The biggest losers are newer and smaller companies, who haven't had enough time or resources to build up a defensive patent portfolio.
I’m starting to understand the capitalism is cancer arguments. Infinite growth is unsustainable. So inevitably companies that were once great need to use tactics like this to continue their infinite growth trajectory.
Sonos, in this case, is 'kind of' a younger company. They're not making huge profits and 'free cash flow from a giant' would be huge for them.
Mostly, patents are used defensively, so that companies big and small, don't get sued by trolls or steamrolled.
That's still a problem. Suppose company X has a real innovation that is worth billions of dollars and google sues them using "bogus" patents? Most patents suck, but there are some that actually cover real innovation.
Bogus patents will be dismissed, eventually. Going to court means commiting to a multiyear-process with no clear outcome if the other party has a hefty patent portfolio (regardless of how you characterize them). The process is quicker and more painful against those without defense,as Google learned when Apple decided to go "Thermonuclear" with patents.
Now that Googles founders are no longer leading the company that might change, but so far their "do not be evil" still lives on in this regard, at least it did a few years ago.
I'm unaware of many devices that output audio to multiple distinct bluetooth targets simultaneously. Bose have that feature as part of their app, but I don't think it's a standard thing as a rule.
Here is the abstract, you can see that it clearly is about the interface of creating and controlling the play group:
> A multimedia controller including a processor, the controller configured to: provide a user interface for a player group, wherein the player group includes a plurality of players in a local area network, and wherein each player is configured to playback a multimedia output from a multimedia source; accept an input to facilitate formation of the player group, indicating that at least two of the players in the local area network are to be included in the player group; for each of the plurality of players within the player group, accept an input to adjust a volume associated with the player, that causes the player to adjust its volume; and accept an input to adjust a volume associated with the player group, wherein the input to adjust the volume associated with the group causes the players in the player group to adjust their volumes.
> This application is a Continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 12/035,112, entitled “User Interfaces For Controlling And Manipulating Groupings In A Multi-Zone Media System”
Here’s another example. Wouldn’t it be neat if the tree control in your file browser could have an icon that represents more than 1 file. That idea may or may not have much value. But you better not implement that idea because IBM has a patent on it.
Patents in software rarely meet the bar that most people have of inventions.
the simple elegance of the following has been lost:
"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."
In my opinion, that's what has gone wrong with the system, i.e., not the theoretical criteria for patentability but its execution.
Thus defining "non-obviousness" is super hard to do -- because it is all context dependent and humans are like a million monkeys inventing everything that can possibly be invented in aggregate.
It only becomes novel due to the details of the tech. But even then you could implement the solution in various ways and I can’t imagine every potential method was patented.
So, while I agree the non-obvious can be hard to define. But with patents like this I don’t think we’ve found the right balance.
What a trash headline too. "Google doesn't want to pay for Sonos technology"...
What innovation is this? Speaker groups - has no one used a high end AV system. Zone A Zone B etc, and you have a remote etc for all this?
Those are just what I know off the top of my head from my own field. While there is plenty of incremental research in any field and plenty of situations where a motivated expert would have arrived at the same basic concept, it is not outlandishly uncommon for a truly novel, non-obvious idea to be presented. The problem for patent examiners is that they are not experts and the pace of software innovation leaves them baffled by the applications they are examining; there are also too few patent examiners to handle the volume of applications that are submitted.
One way to address the problem is to just abolish software patents entirely. Software was never meant to be patentable, at least not if you recognize software as a form of applied math (happy to argue this one all day long) and accept the idea that math is not (or should not be) patentable.
I like to explain it as similar to wheels being circles. Of course that is obvious once you see a circle shaped wheel, but the insight to do that in the first place is the novelty element.
Similar advances are happening in every little niche industry and novelty implies non-obvious.
“Control a group of speakers” - not patentable
“Control a group of speakers, but with software” - patentable
Maybe there’s some really interesting way Sonos controls speakers with software that should be patentable. But “with software” is not novel on its own.
The claim that they are obvious is based on the fact that anyone who is involved in the production of those prior incremental steps can see what can be done as the next increment. People are working on producing wheels using molds and certain materials. Across town, someone starts selling a new kind of mold or material. The "inventor" applies it to the molding of wheels.
Agree with your point though, and it may just be one of those impossible questions which is why the patent office struggles with how to make these decisions.
But when it comes to money-making patents, I think of technological development as an optimization process where everyone has the same objectives and a pretty limited search area at each point in time (available technologies you can use, textbook knowledge you can draw on). I'd generally expect any smart and dedicated person working on the problem to find the next best next steps sooner or later (certainly far less than 20 years).
Maybe take a 3rd party who is unaware of the patent/novel idea and then asking them how to solve for some generalized version of the problem that a patent states it is solving and see what happens.
Similar to black boxing that companies will do with tech that may have been shared under restricted terms.
Just do peer review and get experts' opinions. Don't tell them how to make it work, just tell them what it does. E.g. make the inventor provide a carefuully-worded abstract. By the way patents that claim the category of problem itself as the invention (as opposed to the specific method for solving the problem) are another big problem that needs to be eliminated. Those broad first claims are the ones shot down in challenges. For example "use a computer to processs transactions", or even "use a convolutional network to classify faces". These are not inventions; they are problems that still need to be solved, and it can be done many ways.
Anyway if you're uncertain about 6-months, how can you justify giving them 20 years of monopoly?
give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent and not how the patent implements the claim.
If the experts can find a way to implement the claim in a relatively short period, then the claim is obvious and should be rejected.
Of course it is possible that a more specific claim is not obvisous. For example, if there are specific performance requirements. If the initial claims are obvisious, the inventor can try again with more narrow claims.
Another requirement that is sorely needed is that an expert in the field can actually understand the patent in a reasonable period of time.
So if you could simply "give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent" and have them actually come up with something.. Well, then it'd be trivial to simply rewrite existing unsolved problems in "claim of method to solve problem" and they'd magically be able to solve it?
The problem is that obvious solutions become obvious only when they arrive, and not before.
Even framing a problem so that it can be solved is an example of this.. There are lots of problems that only appear after their solution. Before the solution, they weren't problems, but simply "how things are". Like, right now, we've not solved death, so for most people, it's not really a problem, it's just how things are.. If we solve death, future people will look back at us in disbelief: (You try to tell me people just DIED? and the entire world didn't unite to fix that? what the fuck was wrong with them? guess they got what they deserved..)
For the community, it is only worth granting a patent if the community gets something back in return. And that is, solving a problem we don't know how to solve. Obviously, that can be with efficiency parameters. If the simple solution is 50% efficient and the patent claims 90%. That may be worth the patent. And everybody else can keep using the 50% efficient solution.
In your example, if you now come up with a patent that solves death, then no expert will be able to find a solution in reasonable period.
If you can then show a working version that solves death, even if it is completely obvious in retrospect, it is worth a patent.
Otherwise, why would the community grant a relatively long term (about 20 years) of monopoly? It doesn't make sense to do that just for a clever business idea.
If "buy" buttons can be patented, pretty much anything can be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click
[2] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/patent_archive....
1. Sonos holds such patents
2. Google (the trillion dollar company) is actively making its products worse for users instead of licensing said patents. These are not free products like GMail, these are products that people have paid for, and these are not trivial features, these are features that were actively marketed for the product.
Perhaps we could discuss this, the actually interesting topic, instead of the same boring discussion about the broken US patent system again and again.
On the otherhand, I will no longer consider Sonos products. Be better Sonos. Bluesound seems like the better alternative that is pushing for innovation over pure profit.
My moral point of view is: I bought the thing so I own it. I must be allowed to understand how it works and I decide what it does. I should be able to change the thing's behavior (if I have the skills) and no one else can do that without my order.
Buying locked black boxes is bad (for the customers). Buying locked black boxes that change their functionality without my consent after I bought them is a so utterly broken system that I don't have words for it.
I don’t think getting sued and losing is bait and switch.
The issue isn’t that they got sued and have to remove that feature from future speakers. The issue is that they removed the feature from devices they already sold.
For new devices, Google wouldn’t need to include the same functionality — new customers won’t be expecting the functionality.
What I’m curious about is why they removed the functionality from existing devices. That just opens them up to another lawsuit, this time from customers (for bait and switch). I’m sympathetic… they are in a damned if you do/damned if you don’t situation. And this is probably the cheapest way out.
The problem isn't just that Google removed a feature from an existing product. The problem is also that Google has the ability to do so in the first place.
Having lost the lawsuit, Google's proposed remedy is to "undo" the patent infringement by removing the patented feature. This may reduce the harm to Sonos, but actively harms people who purchased the devices.
As computers are now everywhere and have to do with everything, it is becoming a real political issue to decide if people should be allowed to really modify their computers.
Smartphones most certainly do not allow it. PCs do, but they're from the hobby dominated earlier phase of the technology.
> Buying locked black boxes that change their functionality without my consent after I bought them is a so utterly broken system that I don't have words for it.
I just refer to this as our current situation, and it's going to get worse.
Distinguish "allowed" from "able". It's unsafe to drive around with the brake light bulbs removed, but this doesn't mean that auto manufacturers shouldn't let you change your own brake lights.
But I'm actually thinking about digital computer techonology. In computers the difference between able and allowed works very differently. Specially in software-only contexts (hardware will likely remain hackable).
I'm trying to draw attention to the software-only case (which is also what the article's about).
My nightmare scenario is that by some means, things like web-inpsector tools cease to work, or require a licensed regulated permission to be opened or something.
A technology like WASM, it seems to me, accomplishes a similar goal without trying to do it. The goal of WASM is completely unrelated to restricting inspect-ability, which in turn reduces the ability to modify, yet it manages to do this, it raises the bar for changing webpages.
Right. And maybe even more key is that the manufacturer "allowing" that does not alleviate you from liability for any bad thing that happens as a result of you choosing to drive around without brake lights.
There are other ways to cultivate safety, besides manufacturers locking things down and making them an unmodifiable black-box.
Yes, but they're more difficult and costly; a blackbox is cheap, easy, and when done a certain way, it will increase profits. Why wouldn't companies do this? (I wish I could answer this)
The latest update from Tesla including a significant UI update which many owners are unhappy about. One example I heard was the seat-heat control is now buried one level lower in the menu. Not only is that an annoying change, but potentially has safety ramifications - putting controls in a touchscreen is bad enough, but burying them makes those controls unsafe to use underway.
"My butt is cold"
"My butt is too hot"
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1v4m7aHk__Kdfkoed...
I was recently looking at the Opal C1. Looks great. $300 is a bit rich, but the kicker was they want $4/month for the software! Now, maybe the camera will function without it? I dunno, I kinda stopped right there and didn't look further because that turned me off.
It's a creative form of slavery at least.
The Opal C1 is a prime example. It's a webcam. If the feature-set at sale is acceptable to the consumer, there's no additional cost to Opal (no servers to maintain etc) to necessitate a subscription.
It's been posted many times, but it's a good one, so...
The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik
This is where you might be wrong. I know nothing about the Opal company, but it seems increasingly true that you cannot get VC for a startup without a business model that shows a continuing revenue stream. Business models where the consumer only pays for the product once are dead in the water.
So you may be right that there's no additional cost to Opal, but a subscription might be required by their funders for them to be in business in the first place.
It's still ridiculous and I refuse to buy such products.
Sure, but you can't change it to do something that violates someone's patent without licensing it.
I can do whatever I want with OSS code and I can modify consumer electronics I've bought any way I want; there is no need to be concerned with licenses and patents. Only if I want to sell my creation do patents matter.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistributi...
Here you go, a source:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/patent_infringement
[...] one commits patent infringement by making, using, offering to sell, or selling something that contains every element of a patented claim [...]
I'm not a lawyer, but I think this depends on jurisdiction. In some jurisdictions, patent law has exceptions for private and/or non-commercial use. UK patent law has such an exception, but US patent law does not.
https://www.wipo.int/patents/en/topics/exceptions_limitation...
Now obviously in reality catching you doing this and going after you as a random person is probably not worth it.
Thanks for mentioning Rhasspy, that looks like exactly what I want (my search skills failed me yesterday).
And I completely agree about HW costs. Just getting a decent mike and speaker peripheral gets you close to the price point of the echo dot.
I’m curious how much researching you’ve put into HW options, and if you’re currently leaning toward any specific HW
For the microphone, I want to go with the ReSpeaker mic array in a case [0] for when I need multi-directional far-field recognition (living room, bed room), and probably the often recommended PS2 microphone otherwise (office, kitchen). Speakers will be normal PC stereo speakers in the kitchen, cheapest output I can find for all others (only the kitchen needs to play music while I cook).
rPi 4 will run full Rhasspy (I currently have it on my home assistant pi, I’ll need to see about performance), my old pi3 is running it as a satellite for testing, I want all satellites to be on pi Zero 2 eventually (online discussions say the Zero 1 is too weak for speedy wakeword recognition)
But I still need to do more evaluation and setup before I’m done, currently the satellite can do nothing but turn the office light on and off :D
[0]: https://www.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker-USB-Mic-Array-p-4247.h...
edit: Just wanted to add that the reason I’m going with a Pi is not some specific love for it, but that it’s the platform I’ll have the easiest time finding support for online ;) It matters less for the processor, so if the Mini-ITX SoC’s I want become available again, and I can build my own NAS, then maybe Rhasspy will just run on that.
Seems like just getting a pi zero is going to be the first main challenge.
Of course a penalty clause like this is demanding quite a large concession from the buyer, so I would hope people would tend to be reluctant to agree to such terms. It's also not the sort of thing you could easily claim was included in an implied contract without explicit notification and formal consent.
It's fine to arrange that if that's what both parties want. My argument is simply about the terminology here. If it happens then it's not a sale of goods and the "buyer" doesn't own the goods, either. That's not what "sell" means in the context of goods. It's also not what "own" means.
In the scenario I described there was a sale of goods and the buyer does own them. The seller certainly doesn't retain ownership; they might be able to sue over breach of contract if you modified the good and refused to follow through with the agreed penalty, but they couldn't reasonably sue you merely for modifying the good without their permission as it doesn't belong to them. It's no different than if you already owned something (so no question about sale/ownership) and then agreed in a contract to pay some amount if you modified it in exchange for some form of consideration. Insurance contracts, for example, usually have terms like this: unapproved DIY modifications to your vehicle can cost you your coverage without entitling you to a refund of your premiums, which amounts to a penalty, and yet it remains your vehicle despite those terms. You can always agree not to do something you otherwise have the right to do as part of a contract. It doesn't fundamentally alter the nature of the sale.
Except in this case it's Google's servers.
And Tesla, Toyota, Keurig and an increasing number of hardware manufacturers will continue to yoink features we think we "own"
Requiring owners to use OEM parts to avoid manufacturer voiding the warranty, is a violation of the Magnusson Moss Warranty Act. I don't see why tech companies get away with what automobile companies know they can't. https://www.aftermarketnews.com/hyundai-issues-statement-on-... https://blog.amsoil.com/a-victory-for-consumer-freedom/
Had this act not existed, had the FTC not had the power to send out nasty grams on behalf of consumers, you'd only be able to put in GM branded motor oil to keep your automobile warranty from being voided. It's going to take a broad right to repair law to stop the trend, and unfortunately I'm not sure we'll get it because tech buys politicians. And the vast majority of consumers really just don't give a shit about understanding technology or repair. They willingly just shell out the cash.
https://www.usitc.gov/system/files/secretary/fed_reg_notices...
They’re located here (the source is kind of funny):
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9748647?oq=9%2c195%2c258
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10209953B2/en?oq=10%2c20...
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219959B2/en?oq=9%2c219%...
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2/en?oq=8%2c588%...
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10439896B2/en?oq=10%2c43...
If it were possible to know where all people lived with the product in the old days, and we had instant cheap teleportation of goons for breaking of products back then it would have just been the way things were done.
Everyone says this. Unfortunately nobody reads the "contract". That alone means that most users do not fully understand what they're doing. On top of that, Google, and many tech companies, frequently misrepresent what they're offering.
In other words, for google to pay damage to Sonos or consumer before having lost to consumer is non-sensical.
This is proof of lacking customer protection and leverage.
I think Sonos's case is bullshit anyway, and I think this whole patent environment is ridiculous, but the approach they took to solve it is unethical.
Far from a Google Booster here but just funny to watch their revenue stream go up in flames - probably will impact my sonos experience (less R&D money to spend). Sorry to users that will be impacted - don't worry Google will come out with a volume adjuster in the near term.
Plus lots of irritating UI deficiencies, especially on the Mac version.
Using patents to defend yourself from a Big Tech company is the unfortunate reality.
Sonos didn't develop anything new or novel in this case - they patented something which arguably should not be patentable, which is the ability to adjust the volumes on all speakers at once.
It's rational for companies to patent everything under the sun as a defensive moat, so they don't get themselves trolled, but this is trolling on their part.
If Sonos sat on this patent, that would be fine, but they're trying to troll other companies, it doesn't matter that it's Google and we hate them, it's dumb.
If Google had copied some core special tech that was the result of Sonos R&D that would be a different story.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/5/21166777/sonos-ending-recy...
Back in 2013, while Google was considering how it could make its music streaming service work on Sonos' speakers, the latter company gave the search giant an inside look at its technology. At the time, it didn't seem like a big deal. Google wasn't making speakers, and it wasn't in the smart home business at all. It would be another year before it bought Nest as a way to get into the hardware business. Sonos says that as a result of that inside look, Google "blatantly and knowingly" copied its technology and included it in its own products.
I just clicked through to the NAD chromecast amp and instead of giving me a price and a "buy now" button, there is a "find a dealer" button. You have got to be fucking kidding me.
I strongly disagree with this. You don't own your speakers which are completely dependent on manufacturer which can brick them permanently on a whim. Fuck that and fuck Sonos. That is not a definition of 'doing audio well in 21st century' in any meaningful sense.
As for audio quality, there are companies making better sounding products that allow you to do whatever you want with their products and usually for much/at least a bit less.
Like I said, a 21st century company, with bad things that implies as well as the good things.
We've found the best way is straight bluetooth, or through the mini stereo plug that we have wired to the back.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/speakers-wireless-s...
Too many panicked monkey-beating sessions, where I accidentally clicked the "cast" button on a video has lead me to throw mine out (a gift).
I'd rather just run a HDMI/VGA cable into a TV.
I was so bummed when that happened, I loved being able to upload my own music and have Google music update the metadata and allow me to bring it everywhere. Kind of a data hoarder
I'm torn as I don't really want to support Google - I also don't support Sonos it is a mediocre product wrapped up in a ton of marketing. In the end I guess I'm neutral.
I'm keen on seeing whether Google ends up on the receiving end of a class action suit for disabling features that were sold to customers and then disabled after the fact.
You didn't see it much in the consumer space at the time, but the professional music production studio space had to address these concepts back in the 90s.
From the article: Back in 2013, while Google was considering how it could make its music streaming service work on Sonos' speakers, the latter company gave the search giant an inside look at its technology. At the time, it didn't seem like a big deal. Google wasn't making speakers, and it wasn't in the smart home business at all. It would be another year before it bought Nest as a way to get into the hardware business. Sonos says that as a result of that inside look, Google "blatantly and knowingly" copied its technology and included it in its own products.
Ultimately software patents don't really care how something is implemented, just that it has the functionality defined in the patent. So for this ruling it doesn't really matter if Google copied Sonos or not.
Could you please point to me where you see the ITC (International Trade Commission) that you call as "court" agreeing to the specific paragraph that you posted? I am not arguing with you, just want to know this better myself.
Disc: Googler.
There are also a lot of details like how to handle time delays with a large set of wireless speakers so that sound is synced with a TV picture, comparative volume adjustments for a given acoustic, etc.
Did you read the patents or any other reporting on the patents or this case? For instance:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/in-a-flashpoint-for-...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-loses-sonos-p...
Maybe that isn't what they've actually done though...maybe Google is keeping their synchronization stuff, but breaking the volume change since Sonos made the mistake of combining them in a single claim. That way Google can avoid violating that claim by not doing the volume part.
I have not read anything besides this article, though, so it's possible the patent is being misinterpreted here.
It's not merely "ability to connect speakers in groups". Inc just did a terrible job here.
That's an assumption. You don't know how much Sonos was asking. In addition, companies can choose to not license a patent to their competitors.
I have a few older Sonos One speakers (the OG version) and the setup was trivial for our use case (background music in kitchen, bedroom, and living room). At the time (~5 years ago), they were the clear market leader, both in audio quality and ease-of-use.
I did consider swapping them out for the first HomePod, but price put me off. Apple has since discontinued in favor of the Mini - I need to check them out and see if the audio quality is remotely comparable before making any change.
Has worked incredibly well in my home, though.
There are other aspects which made Sonos far superior to just using Apple's Airplay and iTunes, but those are not covered in the patents in question.
My assumption is that if getting 3 devices to stay in sync - with what I assume is UDP streams and WiFi latency hiccups - was easy or even somewhat difficult, Apple would have been able to solve it. But they couldn't. There must be some special sauce here that Sonos developed and patented.
404 Page Not Found
We're sorry for any inconvenience.
We can't find the page you're looking for.
EDIT: Ad-blocker (uBlock Origin) off and the page loads. I should have thought of that, there was a flicker of something else before the "not found". Still very strange to show a "404 Not Found" in retaliation for an ad-blocker instead of complaining about the latter.
I had to completely disable any scripts to get it to appear, or else I got a 404.
I hope Google goes nuclear on Sonos with their ridiculously huge patent portfolio just to show everyone just how petty and stupid the patent infringement system is.
Did anyone lose their job?
I own a Sonos play:5, a couple Nest Hubs and some Amazon echoes, and even to this day, in terms of sound quality, nothing beats the play:5.
I wonder if Sonos has gone after Apple as well for this trivial patent.
But… wtf Google? Do you have some kind of “we don’t negotiate with people we stole from” ultimatum, or are you just trying to piss off the people that bought into your dystopian nightmare buttons?
In the former case, it's not a patent, but just a feature. Patents need to be about how you accomplish features, and need to be non-obvious.
Sonos no doubt lost a lot of money on this lawsuit.
When I broadcast "Okay Google, broadcast: Hey, son, what do you want on your burger?" it's not exactly a stellar experience...
It usually goes
<long pause>
1st speaker: Hey, Son wh
2nd speaker: Hey, Son, what do you wan
3,4,5 in overlap: Hey, son, what do you want on your burger
while my son is trying to answer the first one.
I mean, you're all on the same wifi network this isn't really excusable behavior.
So, Google: even with stolen technology you still kinda stink at this.
Multi-room music playing isn't something I've attempted. Do you have the speakers grouped together or keep them ungrouped? Does it do a good job of keeping them in sync? Because my biggest disappointments are generally in the poor coordination between the devices on the network not knowing which should handle a request - often I'll be right next to a speaker and make a request, and the one in the next room will reply, bewilderingly.
Every now and then I use it as an intercom but with mixed results.
My take on the google products is that they are far from perfect, but I really don't see anything better out there. I own several Apple products, but when it comes to smart home they have very little to offer, and Siri is far behind the google assistant.
I wonder what that was about.
Also, with good enough AIs we could work around many patents! Users could simply explain the AIs what they want them to do. Even if the action they teach infringe on a patent, nobody would be able to sue them.