A federal jury in San Francisco ruled Friday that Alphabet’s Google must pay $32.5 million in damages because its wireless audio devices infringed on a patent from smart speaker maker Sonos.
This is part of a complex intellectual property dispute between two companies that once worked together that also involved other lawsuits in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands, among other countries. The two companies had worked together to integrate Google’s streaming music service into Sonos products.
Sonos sued Google in 2020 in Los Angeles and at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), alleging the tech giant copied its technology during their partnership and used it in devices such as Google Home and Chromecast Audio. sonos won a limited import ban on certain Google devices at the ITC last year, but Google has filed an appeal. Google has also filed a patent lawsuit against Sonos in California and at the ITC, alleging that Sonos used Google’s technology in its smart speakers, and Sonos called Google’s lawsuit a “scare tactic” designed to “put down a smaller competitor.
Sonos, based in Santa Barbara, California, lost nearly a fifth of its market value earlier this month after it lowered its revenue forecast.
A jury found that Google infringed on one of the two patents involved in the trial, and Sonos had previously asked the court for $90 million in damages, a request that was reduced from $3 billion after U.S. District Judge William Alsup narrowed the scope of the case.
A Google spokesman said Friday that the case was “a narrow dispute over some specific features that are not commonly used” and said the company was considering its next steps. A Sonos spokesman said the ruling “reaffirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio.
