After years of back-and-forth, Sonos has sued Google in federal court alleging that the tech giant has infringed on five of its patents. It said that Google stole patented technology, including the tech that lets smart speakers pair and sync.
Sonos is seeking to ban Google’s smartphones, laptops, and smart speakers from being sold in the US, as well as unspecified financial damages. The company also said that Amazon was also infringing on their intellectual property (IP), but that they can only afford to take on one tech titan.
According to the report from the New York Times, Sonos is suing Google both in the Federal District Court of Los Angeles and the United States International Trade Commission, where the latter has the power to block imported goods that violate patents.
As per the report, in the back-and-forth for years between Google and Sonos, the speaker making company has been pushing for Google to pay licensing fees on the tech and that Google’s counters were that Sonos was also using Google IP and that proposed licensing payments weren’t satisfactory to them.
Commenting on this, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said: “Google has been blatantly and knowingly copying our patented technology. Despite our repeated and extensive efforts over the last few years, Google has not shown any willingness to work with us on a mutually beneficial solution. We’re left with no choice but to litigate.”
Sonos advertises its speakers on Google and sells them on Amazon. It built their music services and talking virtual assistants directly into its products. Sonos workers correspond via Gmail, and run the business off Amazon’s cloud-computing service.
Later, both the companies — Google and Amazon launched their own speakers, undercutting Sonos’s prices and, as per the company, stealing its technology. Now, Google and Amazon each sell as many speakers in a few months as Sonos sells in one year.
