Google loses patent infringement case against smart-speaker company

The Federal Court dismissed Alphabet Inc.’s Google patent infringement case against a developer and manufacturer of smart audio products. In a decision released Monday, the court rejected Google’s claims that several of Sonos Inc.’s smart speakers, which is controlled by a user’s voice and makes use of a “virtual assistant,” infringed on its patent, while also rejecting Sonos’ counterclaim that the patent was invalid because “it is obvious and not inventive.” Google alleged that Sonos infringed on a section of its patent which outlines what an electronic device comprises. More specifically, both parties were disputing over the interpretation of “an adaptive echo and noise control system coupled to the audio input, the audio output, and the transceiver, the adaptive echo and noise control system including an echo canceller; and a noise suppressor, wherein the adaptive echo and noise control system is configured to adaptively determine an order of echo cancellation and noise suppression based on an amount of noise in the received signal to generate a desired signal…” Google identified several of Sonos’ products in its claim, the Sonos One, Sonos Move, Sonos Arc, Sonos Beam, and Sonos Roam in its case. The devices are all designed to send a clean signal to the voice assistant (compatible with both the Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant) so that it will be able to accurately detect and interpret the user’s request. The process used to clean the signal is described as the “Sonos Voice Pipeline.” Justice Russel Zinn found that Sonos did not indirectly infringe on the patent because its devices are not “configured to adaptively determine an order of echo cancellation and noise suppression based on an amount of noise in the received signal to generate a desired signal.” Google’s identified four states in which the Sonos Voice Pipeline operates: when the system is powered on but idle; recognizes the wake word spoken by the user; plays content; and when it pauses during playback where no sound is being played out of the loudspeakers (similar to the first state except that the system is not idle). Zinn favoured Sonos’ argument that the triggering event that moves between each device state is not adaptive, rather it is user controlled. “The term adaptive suggests some degree of automatic response. A device that changes based on direct user inputs is more properly described as ‘adjustable’ or ‘configurable.’ A lightbulb that changes brightness as the sky gets darker is adaptive; a lightbulb with a dimmer switch is not,” Zinn wrote in his decision. The court also found the Sonos devices in question did not directly infringe on Google’s patent because “out of the box, the Sonos devices do not have the voice assistant configured, the microphone is off, and the beep acknowledgement tone is disabled.” “The Sonos Voice Pipeline, the allegedly infringing item, is only used after and when the voice assistant is enabled. Accordingly, out of the box, the Sonos Voice Pipeline is not used at all. There is therefore no echo cancellation or noise suppression, nor any received signal,” Zinn stated.

Google loses patent infringement case against smart-speaker company

Brief | August 16, 2022

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Google loses patent infringement case against smart-speaker company

Brief | August 16, 2022

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