SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The jury in the patent infringement trial between Google and audio products manufacturer Sonos heard closing arguments Friday morning before they withdrew to weigh the evidence.
By 2 p.m. however, the jury — which had only begun deliberating less than 90 minutes before — recessed for the weekend leaving the parties in the case to cool their heels for a week before they know the verdict. Given U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s schedule, they won't return to finish deliberations until May 26.
The trial marked the latest in a long series of legal actions the two California-based tech companies have lobbed against one another over the past decade. This time, Google sued seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement of six patents relating to multiroom speaker technology, which Alsup eventually pared to two: patents 885 and 966, as they were referred to at trial.
Google and Santa Barbara based-Sonos worked together several years before to help Google services function on Sonos’ brand of speakers. Sonos claims Google then stole Sonos’ smart speaker technology for use in its own brand, Google Home, as well as other gadgets.
The conflict between the two companies has raged for several years, with each suing and countersuing. In January 2022, the U.S. International Trade Commission found Google in violation of five Sonos smart speaker technology-related patents.
The jurors heard two weeks of witnesses and expert witnesses, offering dense explanations and reams of evidence about smart speaker technology and patent law. The result was a complicated back-and-forth between each party’s lawyers and the witnesses.
“Can you explain your understanding of what it needs to be in group mode versus implicating or evoking?” plaintiffs’ lawyer Sean Pak asked expert witness Kevin Almeroth at trial, referring to the use of speakers in group or other settings.
“Yes, so the idea of the claims are that it separates this idea of group creation from invocation,” Almeroth replied. “So you can create zone scenes independently of whether or not they’re actually in both. So the invocation part, the activation is, once it’s been created, you can transition to invoking or activating the group. And that’s where I’m just gonna — I’ve got the 885 in operating in accordance with a given one of the first and second predefined groupings of zone players.”
And on it went.
Friday’s closing arguments, offered by Pak and defendants’ attorney Sean Sullivan, amounted to a rehash of the technical jargon the jury had heard before, with Sullivan assuring jurors at the beginning of his arguments, “This case is not nearly as complicated as Google made it out to be.”
Jurors heard further explanations of dynamic groups, zone settings, and party mode, all classifications denoting smart speakers in various configurations, and how the information about zone groups is stored. They saw timelines that purported to illustrate when each company began using the contested technology.
Pak, Google's attorney, after assuring the jury some of the issues in the case were indeed very simple, went on to point out that the matter as a whole was a little more complicated.
Google used technology that had been in use already by other companies, Pak said, such as Yamaha, Squeezebox and Bose. The two patents over which Google and Sonos are fighting are “old and obvious ideas,” Pak said. “They don’t have the right to go back and claim a monopoly.”
Whether the jury agrees won’t be known for at least another week.
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