latest
Google forced to change how Nest speakers work following Trade Commission ruling for Sonos [Update]
Cast-enabled speakers are also losing Speaker Group volume controls
Read update
Sonos and Google have been at war with each other for years now, as the former company alleges some major copyright and patent infringement. As lawsuits and accusations of theft have continued to pile up, Google has been forced to make changes to its software in response. The company was just handed its biggest blow yet, as Sonos won a major court decision that, at worst, could result in an import ban on some of Google's most popular products, but in the meantime will force changes to how Google's smart speakers work.
Sonos could get a whole bunch of Google products banned in Germany — is the US next?
The Pixel 4a, YouTube Music, Nest speakers, and potentially more might be affected
You may have heard that Sonos and Google are involved in a dispute over patent infringement in the US, with Sonos claiming that the search company used its power to steal intellectual property when they first partnered up. The legal debate isn't limited by borders, though. Sonos also brought Google to court in Germany, where it has managed to enforce a preliminary sales ban of a whole bunch of Google products using the Cast protocol.
As Huawei's ongoing legal troubles with the US government begin to yield financial hurdles, the Chinese OEM has ignited a new legal quarrel, this time with a popular US phone carrier. Huawei has officially filed two lawsuits against Verizon Communications on the grounds of patent infringement.
With their fingerprint sensors, iris scanners, and facial recognition tech, Samsung phones feature more methods of biometric authentication than most, if not all, of their competitors. However, the Korean company is now being sued by a US-based "data security firm," PACid Technologies, for infringing on two US patents and one Korean patent with its biometric features.
As far as patent disputes go, BlackBerry vs. Nokia is a sad undercard between two fallen heavyweights whose combined market share remains part of the dismal "Other" category in most reports. Nevertheless, Round 1 of this match is going to Nokia, thanks to an arbitration court ruling that has awarded the Finnish company $137 million to resolve a contract dispute related to payments it said BlackBerry owed under a patent license contract signed in 2012.
A couple of months ago we learned that BlackBerry CEO John Chen decided a good way to arrest his company's decline was to go into patent lawsuit mode. His first victim was rival manufacturer BLU, against which BlackBerry filed two separate infringement lawsuits covering 15 different patents. One of the suits was mainly based on software while the other looked at hardware, specifically relating to phone signal transmission.
If corporate patent litigation was a soap opera, it would be at once the most interesting and most snooze-inducing show on television. The latest twist comes from a three-year-old suit by Fujifilm against Motorola Mobility, which was still a Google company instead of a Lenovo one when the suit first started. Fuji alleged that Moto violated three camera patents and one wireless patent in its phones without licensing. A San Francisco court invalidated Fuji's claims on all but one of them, so Moto will have to pay for the privilege of one camera patent.
Can't two grown international mega-corporations just get along? Apparently not. Two months after NVIDIA filed suit against Samsung in Delaware, Samsung is suing NVIDIA right back. The South Korean manufacturer alleges that NVIDIA violated some of its technical patents, including data use and semiconductor buffering. Samsung then upped the ante by accusing NVIDIA of false advertising, saying that NVIDIA's claims that the SHIELD Tablet has the world's fastest mobile processor are demonstrably false.
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Reuters reports that the Rockstar consortium, a joint effort between Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and Blackberry, has sued Google and Android manufacturers Samsung, HTC, LG, ASUStek, Huawei, ZTE, and Pantech over patents formerly held by the now-defunct Nortel Networks. Rockstar won the patents in an auction in 2011 that topped out at $4.5 billion - Google lost the same auction with a $4.4 billion bid.
Remote Locator Systems, LLC, a generic company incorporated in East Texas, filed a lawsuit against seven defendants recently for allegedly violating one of its patents. That patent can be found here. They've also filed against Google, Apple, T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T.
President Obama Proposes Patent Troll Laws That Will Probably Do Very Little To Stop Most Patent Trolling
Patent trolling is far from a divisive issue in the United States. Pretty much everyone but the trolls can agree that patent trolling is damaging to the
Patent trolling is far from a divisive issue in the United States. Pretty much everyone but the trolls can agree that patent trolling is damaging to the economy, and generally kind of a dick move. Patent trolling, if you're not familiar with the practice, is quite simple in concept: buy patents, extort licensing fees from alleged infringers, and sue if they refuse to comply. President Obama proposed some "major" changes to US law that will supposedly reduce the effectiveness of such companies. Before we look at those, though, let's look briefly at what makes a troll tick.
Samsung Mobile Chief's Refusal To Negotiate With Apple Is Posturing, And It's Probably Not Even True
I can't say I'm the biggest student of Gandhi, but that whole "an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind" bit sure came to mind this morning when I read that Samsung's head of mobile, Shin Jong-kyun, said the company "[does not] intend to (negotiate) at all" with Apple. This came on news of HTC's settlement with Apple on Saturday, which I contend is objectively good for the industry and consumers, no matter how you spin it.
Have you heard?! Apple now says the Galaxy S III is infringing on its patents. Woe is us!
According to the Wall Street Journal, Samsung isn't wasting time on keeping the eight smartphones Apple is demanding injunctions against on store shelves. And no, I'm not talking about an appeal.
If you were following our meta-live coverage, you'll know that the outcome of Apple v. Samsung was basically really, really bad for Samsung. To the tune of slightly over a billion dollars. Yikes. Samsung did escape any successful allegations of infringement through its tablets, but on the smartphone front, they really did get destroyed.
Breaking live from TheVerge, who are in the courtroom, we're hearing that the jury in Apple v. Samsung has rendered a verdict. Now, this is complicated - there were around 700 questions for the jury to answer on the instructions they were provided, so there are a lot of issues to go through here.
While the tech world waits with bated breath for the conclusion of Apple's United States case against the world's most prolific smartphone maker, another case is just wrapping up in Samsung's home country of South Korea. The Wall Street Journal reports that a Seoul court found both Apple and Samsung in violation of each other's patents, with the former violating two of Samsung's patents and the latter violating one of Apple's.
Google's Motorola Files New Lawsuit Against Apple At The ITC, Seeks Import Bans On Pretty Much Everything Apple Makes
According to Bloomberg, Motorola Mobility has just filed a new lawsuit against Apple at the ITC. Now, ordinarily, we might not report on the filing of
According to Bloomberg, Motorola Mobility has just filed a new lawsuit against Apple at the ITC. Now, ordinarily, we might not report on the filing of such a suit - especially when the complaint hasn't been made public (we have basically zero details). What makes this particular filing important, though, is that it is the first lawsuit filed by Motorola now that it is officially, 100% a part of Google. That's a big deal.