Google and Sonos are now fighting over voice assistant patents
"[Sonos has] started an aggressive and misleading campaign against our products, at the expense of our shared customers," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Sonos' Voice Control assistant arrived in June, letting users give commands with the phrase"Hey Sonos," much like Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant. In the complaint, Google said it"worked for years with Sonos engineers on the implementation of voice recognition and voice-activated devices control in Sonos products... even providing its Google Assistant software to Sonos for many years.
Google countersued, alleging that Sonos was using Google’s search, software, networking, audio processing and other technology without paying a license fee and made"false claims" about their work togetherthat Google infringed on five Sonos patents. That forced Google to change the way its speakers were set up to avoid an import ban.
"Google previously sued us all over the world and Sonos has prevailed in every decided case," Sonos' chief legal officer Eddie Lazarus told."[The latest lawsuits] are an intimidation tactic designed to retaliate against Sonos for speaking out against Google's monopolistic practices." All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
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