Alphabet’s Google should pay back $32.5 million (about Rs. 268 crore) in damages for infringing a single of clever-speaker maker Sonos’s patents in its wi-fi audio gadgets, a San Francisco federal jury decided on Friday.
The scenario is part of a sprawling mental home dispute among the previous collaborators that consists of other lawsuits in the US, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
The companies previously labored collectively to combine Mountain Look at, California-primarily based Google’s streaming tunes service into Sonos merchandise. Sonos initially sued Google for patent infringement in Los Angeles and at the US Global Trade Fee in 2020, accusing the tech giant of copying its technology during their collaboration in devices like Google Dwelling and Chromecast Audio.
Sonos past calendar year won a limited import ban on some Google equipment from the ITC, which Google has appealed.
Google has countered with its individual patent lawsuits in California and at the ITC, accusing Sonos of incorporating the tech firm’s technologies into its good speakers. Sonos has identified as Google’s lawsuits an “intimidation tactic” to “grind down a smaller sized competitor.”
Santa Barbara, California-centered Sonos missing just about one-fifth of its marketplace valuation before this month soon after reducing its income forecast.
A Google spokesperson reported on Friday the scenario was a “slender dispute about some quite certain capabilities that are not commonly utilised,” and that the organization was thinking about its up coming steps. Google also reported it has “normally designed technological know-how independently and competed on the advantage of our thoughts.”
A Sonos spokesperson mentioned the verdict “re-affirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio.”
© Thomson Reuters 2023
