Google is fighting back against Sonos, accusing the wireless speaker company of infringing on several of its patents on a smart speaker and voice control technology. It’s the latest blow in a back-and-forth tussle over wireless speakers that has so far seen Sonos file multiple lawsuits, with Google following up with a countersuit that saw the court rule in Sonos’ favor, resulting in Google’s product being stripped of its functionality.
These new lawsuits accuse Sonos of infringing on seven other Google patents, one of which focuses on hot word detection and wireless charging, while another revolves around how a set of speakers determines which one should respond to voice input.
Google spokesman José Castañeda said the lawsuit was filed to “defend our technology and challenge Sonos’ clear and ongoing infringement of our patents. Castañeda said Sonos has “embarked on an aggressive and misleading campaign against our products at the expense of our shared customers.
Both lawsuits were filed this morning in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Castaneda said Google plans to file a similar lawsuit with the U.S. International Trade Commission in the coming days and will seek to ban the import of any infringing Sonos products.
The legal battle began in 2020 when Sonos initially sued Google over multi-room speaker technology. the two companies worked together years ago to get Google services to run on Sonos speakers, and Sonos later claimed that Google continued to steal its speaker technology for use in making Google Home and other devices. A few months later, Google filed a countersuit, claiming that Sonos also infringed on several of its patents. Sonos then filed another lawsuit. Finally, in January of this year – two years after the first lawsuit was filed – the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Sonos, finding that Google had infringed on Sonos’ patents.
In response, Google had to adjust the functionality of some of its products. This included Google removing the ability to adjust the volume of a group of speakers at once – a rather annoying change for users with multiple Google speakers. Today’s lawsuit appears to be Google’s attempt to gain leverage over Sonos in the debate between the two over features.
