Sonos looses latest patent battle with Google

Sonos and Google have been in a years-long court battle over who owes who money for "inventing" multi-room audio and speaker streaming. Back in 2006 Sonos filed a provisional application for a patent on audio streaming, but sat on their butts and didn't file an actual patent application until 2019. Long after Google had released some of their own streaming solutions. Sonos claimed (and a jury agreed) that by linking their 2019 patent to their 2006 provisional one they should be paid by Google and anyone else they deem for infringing the patent. Problem is a judge has today thrown that US$32.5m settlement out the window and tore Sonos a new one in the process for wasting everyone's time. Judge Alsup was pissed, essentially calling Sonos out for having the balls to try and backdate their patent and then alter the documents presented to court. He warned them to not pursue similar patent issues with other companies and went as far as telling Sonos "[they have] done exactly what the Supreme Court has long said should not be done", referring to them using a time-machine-like defence. Google has jumped around the room like a gloating school boy and thrown some shade over on the company blog.