San Francisco In the patent dispute between Google and the speaker provider Sonos, the Internet giant is taking a counterattack after a lost round. Google filed two new lawsuits on Monday (local time), in which Sonos is accused of violating seven more patents. These include technologies that regulate how connected devices with voice assistants handle a wake-up word and wireless charging of batteries.
Sonos won a patent case with the US Trade Commission ITC earlier this year. This had consequences for the operation of Google’s speakers. For example, with a group of several networked speakers, users therefore have to change the volume for each of them individually instead of together for all of them.
In the new lawsuits, Google refers, among other things, to the fact that Sonos brought its own voice assistant to control music on its devices. Since 2019, the Google Assistant has been available on Sonos speakers.
The chief justice of Sonos, Eddie Lazarus, accused Google of an “intimidation tactic” in a statement on the website “Protocol”, among other things. Sonos was a pioneer in the use of networked loudspeakers in different rooms of a household and has filed corresponding patents in the dispute.
