Photo: ANP
Tech company Google has infringed on Sonos patents for loudspeakers. This was confirmed by the US International Trade Commission. So Google should stop importing various products made by the company outside the United States. This pertains to smartphones, laptops and also smart home devices with speaker system from Google subsidiary Nest. Unless US President Joe Biden objects to the ban, the ban will take effect within 60 days.
Sonos has been fighting for some time against Google, which, according to a much smaller US manufacturer of wireless speaker systems, began using Sonos technologies after sharing technical information with Google. It happened after talks about integrating Google Play Music, Google’s live streaming service, into Sonos products.
Google gets only a small portion of its income from selling gadgets, but nonetheless finds the ruling to be very strict. The technology company believes that devices contain dozens and sometimes hundreds of technologies. That is why, according to Google, import ban is a very severe penalty because patent infringement has been done in a few technologies. This would greatly harm the interests of consumers.
Sonos started the case against Google several years ago. The company immediately indicated that it was ready to license Google if the technology group was willing to pay. Google has not yet decided to do so.
