Sonos vs Google revisited - an update after the most recent court decision
Back in October 2020 we showed that Ambercite could be used to predict that Google might be at risk from a patent infringement lawsuit from Sonos - a prediction that matched actual litigation.
Among other things, we showed that:
An analysis of the litigated Sonos’ patents using Ambercite licensing analysis quickly points to Google and some of the patents they own.
An analysis of the full Sonos patent portfolio (so not just the litigated patents) also leads to Google
It was possible to work backwards from the Google patents identified in Step 1 to work out which Sonos patent could be litigated - and this largely matches the Sonos patents that were being litigated.
It was a powerful example of just how useful the Ambercite technology can be.
Fast forward to the present, post-2020, and the legal landscape has evolved. Recent developments reveal that Sonos has secured a substantial $32.5 million patent infringement judgment against Google. Notably, this legal victory stems from a Sonos patent, US10,848,885, pertaining to the synchronization of music across distinct zones
So how would Ambercite go in analysing the infringment risk to Google from this patent?
As always, the process is very simple - we add US10,848,885 into Ambercite, select a licensing search, set the date filter to avoid any patents filed before this one - and hit the button:
In this case, as is so often the case, most of the most predicted to be similar patents are filed by Sonos. Perhaps no surprise there. But we can filter out these patents easily enough;
The extract shows that the top ranked non-Sonos patent was filed by Altac Lansing - and the second top patent was initially filed by Motorola - and when we search further - is now owned by Google.
US9307508B2 covers a method of synchronising audio playback, and so the subject matter is very similar.
Now… of course the existence of a similar patent owned by a company that manufactures a technology does not in itself prove that the technology of the company relies on the technology disclosed in the patent. But this is a very useful clue that it might, and provides a target for further investigation. And sometimes, as has been proven this case - this investigation can be very worthwhile.
Discussion
This blog shows, that for the second time for this pair of companies, Ambercite is able to predict the potential of patent litigation which is then confirmed by litigation outcomes.
But this is not unique. For example, we have previously shown that:
Ambercite was able to find a prior art document that invalidated a Disney patent.
Ambercite was able to show that Cisco was at risk for patent litigation filed by Centripetal Networks Inc - and this led to a 1.9 billion damages decision.
Ambercite was able to predict that Broadcom (and prior to that, Marvell) was at risk from patent litigation that had been filed by Carnegie Mellon.
These are strong results - and just confirms how useful Ambercite can be when used as part of your AI powered patent searching toolkit.
Would you like to try this for yourself?
Ambercite does offer free trials in a scaled-back version, but only 25 results are shown, and you really need to go beyond the first 25 patents to get the best outcomes from this approach. For this reason, I strongly suggest that you contact us if you want to test this for yourself, and we can arrange a trial of the full version: