Judge throws out $32.5M Sonos win against Google
theverge.com
theverge.com
If this is true, Sonos needs to be punished for such behavior. They clearly abused the patent system for their benefit, I'm surprised this wasn't brought up during the initial trial. Maybe it was, but I don't recall anyone discussing it.
Though, I should at least clarify I had nothing to do with anything close to this, and don't have any information on it that I could have received from working at Google.
This was an incredibly crappy lawsuit and whatever Sonos claimed was repeated unquestioned, universally.
Sonos way over-reacted to the idea of speakers with assistants in them and made it seem existential, hence this sudden rush in 2019. I had just invested in their system, and never ever will invest in Sonos equipment again, solely due to this. Both my Pixel and Sonos got worse because Sonos' leadership needed to stroke their confirmation bias that they were in competition with Google.
Type "sonos" into the HN search at the bottom -> click first result about patent claim -> top comment in that thread says "Not here to defend Google, but how can something trivial like that even be patentable?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29890921
The replies to that comment are in similar vein. The next top-level reply is also critical of Sonos albeit not related to patents ("you don't own the speakers you have bought"). Scrolling some more, I don't see anyone supporting Sonos or repeating their claim, not even with questioning, let alone universally.
Moving to the next relevant search result, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29831929, the top comment leads with some links to the patents so people can find what is actually being discussed, then says "I'm a big fan of Sonos products but this ruling won't go through, right?" The direct reply is "[quote from patent] This one in particular seems way too broad." The next top-level comment complains about this being why Android lost some functionality (maybe not taking a side I guess, but more leaning towards Google than Sonos), with the next top-level comment having a similar message: "It sounds like an absolute nightmare for users".
If you remember Sonos' patent claims as having been universally defended by people, that may have been seen from behind a certain filter or bubble
Anyway, I don't know that saying "I'm team Sonos" or "I'm team Google" helps a discussion in the first place. I'd discuss the thing on merits
> Anyway, I don't know that saying "I'm team Sonos" or "I'm team Google" helps a discussion in the first place. I'd discuss the thing on merits
I agree! For the record, I didn't say either of those things :) Apologies, but I don't see team or identifying with either. Sorry if I missed it.
> Sonos' patent claims as having been universally defended by people, that may have been seen from behind a certain filter or bubble
I'm guessing it was "universally" that inspired you: apologies, I definitely did not mean everyone, not even everyone on the internet, not even everyone on HN! Just a throwaway word in a flow of typing: brains are weird like that.
It means a lot to me that someone put in so much effort to make sure to understand there wasn't a false dichotomy here. You're, no exaggeration, a hero for standing up when people do this. Drives me nuts too.
FWIW, you didn't have to put in that much work, as short as "Universally?" would have sufficed. (apologies if I misunderstand: I'm not sure exactly what led to the strong, helpful, contribution, but I'm assuming that the root was 'universally')
I got the whole thing done for the cost of 1 Sonos speaker.
In Jan of 2019 standalone Chromecast Audio devices were discontinued and support for them has dwindled ever since. Apparently this was around the time of the Sonos lawsuit.
Of course, Google cancels projects constantly, but it sure looks like in this case they killed something genuinely cool and useful due to patent trolling.
Every single invalidated patent is a cause for celebration.
> As Reuters reported on Monday, the reasoning boils down to this: according to the judge, Sonos wrongly linked a pair of patent applications in 2019 to a much earlier provisional application from 2006 [...] Sonos is also said to have discreetly made amendments to the documents, which greatly frustrated the judge.
> Above all else, [judge] says Sonos simply waited far too long to raise [the patent claim, namely 13 years]
> Sonos says [the] decision is “wrong on both the facts and law” and plans to appeal
In Dutch consumer law, I know that you can't come to the retailer 23 months into owning a product to say that the power button was broken from day one and expect a free repair. You need to tell them that in a timely manner for warranty to be provided. If there is a clause in USA patent law that says the same, then the ruling would make sense, but the article doesn't really say, and if there were such a clause, then how could they have won the lower court case? So I would assume there is no such clause.
And the part about modifying your patent documents "discreetly", err, is that not perjury?
Then Sonos filed a patent in 2018 based on that provisional application, well after that reasonable 1 year delay. By the time, the industry has built something based on that 2006 non-patent.
Essentially, Sonos tried to patent the thing retroactively.
Basically Sonos took a patent application that had been filed 13 years earlier but not granted (due to prior art), modified it to add a feature Google was already shipping but Sonos wasn't, and resubmitted it for a new evaluation. The patent was granted but backdated to the time of the original filing in 2006.
> On Sonos’s representation that its amendment to the specification and figures contained no new matter, the patent examiner allowed the amendments to the applications for the patents in suit
(They then proceeded to lie about this to the judge in the original trial as well.)
[0] https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/znpnznkjgpl/...
Plus they should be required to be written in a way that's useful to someone in the industry, rather than just lawyers.
In general, the patent system is completely broken at this point. It only benefits large and mega corporations, and foreign countries ignore it anyway. So it just is harming the overall ecosystem.