Judge Slams Sonos, Rules Patents Invalid in Google Speaker Case

A pair of Sonos Inc. patents covering the management of smart speakers in a multiroom system were deemed unenforceable by a federal court months after a $32.5 million jury verdict in their favor against Google was vacated.

Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that Sonos filed provisional applications for US Patent Nos. 10,848,885 and 10,469,966 in 2006, but waited over 13 years to file their completed applications. “The industry had already marched on and put the claimed invention into practice,” Alsup said in his order dated Oct. 6.

Alsup pointed to evidence from 2014 when Google shared with Sonos a plan to use the the technology in the inventions under dispute, and that the companies considered collaborating but plans never materialized. Even after Google launched their first device in 2015, Sonos waited four years to pursue claims on their invention and then another year until they sold their own competing product.

Sonos futher “sunk any claim of priority” by amending the patents’ specification to add new matter in the midst of litigation, even while telling the patent examiner the inserted content was not new, the court said. “It is wrong that our patent system was used in this way,” Aslup added. He chastised Sonos for punishing an innovator “to enrich a pretender by delay and sleight of hand.”

The court denied all other post-trial motions as moot and said a final judgment will be entered. The order may not be the end of the years long legal battle, though, as the parties have filed related lawsuits in Texas, Canada, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP represents Google. Lee Sullivan Shea & Smith LLP and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP represent Sonos.

The case is Google LLC v. Sonos Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 20-cv-06754, 10/6/23.