Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Sound & Video Contractor.
After a lengthy legal battle, Sonos has been awarded $32.5 million in their lawsuit against Google, per the verdict of a San Francisco jury. The jury determined that Google did indeed infringe on one of the two Sonos patents in question.
The battle began in 2020, with Sonos filing a case with the US International Trade Commission saying that Google had infringed on their patents. The International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Sonos, which led to an import ban on some of the Google products in question. Most recently, Google has fired back by suing Sonos over their smart speaker voice control technology, claiming infringement. That trial began earlier this month and is still ongoing.
The trial that just wrapped up saw the jury decide that Google did not infringe on Sonos’ patent for their home app, but did infringe on one of their speaker patents.
In a statement to The Verge, Eddie Lazarus, Sonos’ chief legal officer and CFO said, “We are deeply grateful for the jury’s time and diligence in upholding the validity of our patents and recognizing the value of Sonos’s invention of zone scenes. This verdict re-affirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio, as the International Trade Commission has already ruled with respect to five other Sonos patents. In all, we believe Google infringes more than 200 Sonos patents and today’s damages award, based on one important piece of our portfolio, demonstrates the exceptional value of our intellectual property. Our goal remains for Google to pay us a fair royalty for the Sonos inventions it has appropriated.”
See also: Summertime Is Smart Lock Selling Season
