Google says it owns the know-how that underlies the Sonos swimsuit

Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it is the legal owner of patents on the retention of music playlists in the cloud, which is a key component of a lawsuit by Sonos Inc. filed through the Google Play Music system. Sonos called this claim “nonsense”.

Sonos, an early proponent of connected home speakers, has claimed that Google learned the technology through a partnership to integrate Google Play with the Sonos platform, and then decided to sell its own line of products and Sonos from Undercut price.

In a court filing filed Tuesday, the Alphabet unit said that “Google, not Sonos, came up with the idea of ​​the cloud queue” and should therefore be listed as the owner and inventor of two of Sonos’ patents. It is also alleged that a 2013 content integration agreement allows Sonos to claim ownership of a technology developed during the partnership.

“Sonos has grossly misrepresented our partnership,” said José Castañeda, a Google spokesman. “We have met with them frequently to integrate our technology with theirs and to develop additional technologies that they have now invented and that we are violating.”

Google’s allegations were in response to a lawsuit Sonos filed in January 2020 that caught the attention of regulators and Congress.

“Sonos invented the technologies in question several years before the companies collaborated in 2013,” Sonos said in a statement. “Google’s allegations are nonsense and we look forward to proving it in court.”

Sonos is trying to block imports of Google hardware, including its phones and laptops, in a dispute pending before the US International Trade Commission in Washington. The commission is due to announce the next steps in the case on Friday. It is likely to review all or part of a judge’s findings that older Google products infringed Sonos patents but that Google had redesigned around them. Both sides have asked the commission to review the judge’s findings.

Google had also filed its own lawsuit alleging Sonos infringing Google patents for things like managing digital rights and routing communications. This case is also pending in federal court in San Francisco.

The case is Sonos Inc. v Google Inc., 21-7559, US District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco)