A jury in San Francisco, USA, delivered a verdict last Friday finding that Google’s products infringe one of Sonos’ smart speaker patents. So Google was ordered to pay Sonos $2.30 each for all patent-infringing devices sold so far. The circulation of these devices amounted to 14 million. Armed with a calculator, we get the final amount – $ 32.5 million.
But how everything started well some 10 years ago, when the two companies cooperated and, as far as is now known, had no complaints against each other. The litigation began in 2020, and the clouds over Google began to gather two years ago, when the US International Trade Commission found that Google violated Sonos patents. The same panel then finally found that Google had infringed five Sonos patents.
A jury in San Francisco ruled in favor of Sonos on only one of the patents in question. Otherwise, the amount of compensation could reach up to 120 million dollars and more.
Eddie Lazarus, Chief Counsel and Chief Financial Officer of Sonos, said: “We are deeply grateful to the jury for the time and diligence in maintaining the validity of our patents… This verdict reaffirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio, as the Commission International Trade Commission has already ruled on five other Sonos patents.”
In turn, Google spokesman Peter Schottenfels (Peter Schottenfels) believes that “This is a narrow dispute about some very specific features that are not commonly used. Of the six patents filed by Sonos, only one has been found to be infringed and the rest have been rejected as invalid or not infringed… We are considering our next steps.”
Indeed, the paths of the blind American Themis are not always clear, and now it is difficult to say in which direction the scales of her scales will incline in the course of further proceedings. Especially since there is no end in sight.