A jury has ruled in a patent infringement lawsuit between Google and Sonos that has resulted in the search giant paying millions of dollars. The case began in 2020, when Sonos, which mainly makes smart speakers, accused Google of infringing patents related to multi-room audio in its line of soundbars and other devices, Apple Insider.
The court previously ruled in favor of Sonos v. Google regarding other patents — the crux of the current hearing was to show whether the search giant had infringed on new patents in the recent period. As it turns out, yes, two of them. One was the Sonos standard with serial number 855 and the other with serial number 966, which Google could not have used without paying royalties.
Based on the court decision, Google has to pay a royalty of $2 and 30 cents for every product sold that uses the Sonos standard, which doesn’t seem so bad at first, but given that Google has sold 14 million such devices, it immediately becomes different. The situation — because $2.30 rises to just over $32.5 million.
The ruling reaffirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent suite
– reads the statement issued by Sonos.
In all, we believe that Google is infringing more than 200 Sonos patents, and the damages award issued today, based on a significant portion of our portfolio, demonstrates the exceptional value of our intellectual property. We still aim for Google to pay us fair royalties for Sonos inventions that fit
– concluded the statement.
