
US court allows Google speaker imports in Sonos patent fight
Google's smart speakers and other devices do not violate Sonos' patent rights and can be imported into the United States, a U.S. appeals court affirmed on Monday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a U.S. trade tribunal's decision that Google's redesigns of products, including Google Home speakers, Pixel phones and Nest Hub smart displays, were sufficient to avoid infringing Sonos' multi-room wireless audio patents.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM KozhikodeIIMK Advanced Data Science For ManagersVisitMITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Product ManagementVisit The court also affirmed that the original versions of the devices infringed Sonos' patents.
Sonos said in a statement that the ruling confirms that Google is a «widespread infringer of Sonos's patented inventions that underlie wireless home audio.»
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.
Google and Sonos have been embroiled in a sprawling intellectual property dispute over smart-speaker technology that has included lawsuits in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The companies previously worked together to integrate Mountain View, California-based Google's streaming music service into Sonos products.
Sonos won a $32.5 million patent-infringement verdict against Google last year in California federal court, which a federal judge overturned months later. Google has countered with its own