> Google partnered with Sonos explicitly to get access to their internal designs, and then copied them

If anything this ought to be strong evidence that the patents failed to disclose the invention and are invalid. Patents are a deal where you publicly disclose your invention in exchange for a temporary monopoly. If someone has to get access to your internal designs to copy them, they shouldn't be protected by patent.

Edit: (Note I'm talking about how the law ought to work, I'm not claiming this is strong evidence under current US law that the patents actually are invalid)

While it's true that Google partnered with Sonos and then copied the features they saw Sonos having success with I'm not aware of any allegations they used internal Sonos documents.

If that happened I'm surprised that no case summaries mentioned this anywhere!

Can you link to this?

If they were proper partners I would think they would be working together using Google's money along with Sonos patents as a team without needing to license the patent except to those other than the partnership.

I'm not very well informed but it looks like Google was simply an untrustworthy partner and they split up unamicably.

The problem is companies can just ignore your request to license a patent. Did you know the reason any artist can "cover" another artist's song is that Congress added "compulsory licensing" to copyright law? For 9.1 cents per copy of a song, you can record your own version and sell it. We need to do the same thing for patent claims. Set a floor of, IDK, $100 per copy of a patent claim infringement. As it is now, damages are completely, un-capped and you have to pay for a lawsuit to get a jury to decide how much a patent is worth.