Google, still reeling from an earlier ruling, is suing Sonos over audio patents

Google and Sonos are going to court. After losing a previous volume control patent case, Google is now suing Sonos over its voice control technology. Google confirmed the case edges This morning, the company said it intends to “defend our technology and challenge Sonos’ clear and ongoing infringement of our patents.” Google claims to have infringed seven patents related to voice input, including hot-word detection and a system that determines which speakers should respond to voice commands.

Sonos typically supports Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa for voice control, but Google and Amazon are also Sonos’ biggest speaker competitors. So Sonos launched its own voice assistant feature I’m MaiThis opens the door to this new batch of Google patents. (Currently, Sonos supports three options.)

Google horse racing It’s aggressively using the patent, but it’s part of a series of lawsuits that have tipped the company’s line of smart speakers after Google lost an earlier ruling in January. Instead of paying royalties to Sonos, Google chose to do so Access to customers’ homes And start disassembling already purchased hardware. Google stripped the ability to control speaker array volume from Nest Audio and Google Home speakers, turning what was a simple and logical task into an ordeal that required a screen full of individual sliders. It’s hard to overstate how annoying consumers are with volume control being the primary function of any speaker.

Sonos pioneered the connected speaker concept, but has faced competition from big tech giants in recent years. Sonos to say Google provided insight into its operations in 2013 when Sonos sought support for Google Play Music and Google used access to a “clear and thoughtful copy” of Sonos technology. Google’s first smart speaker was launched after three years.