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Google found guilty of infringing Sonos patents
- VoxPelli 5y ago”a smart speaker company by the name of Sonos initiated a lawsuit against Google” Would have expected it to also say “a search engine company called Google”
- em3rgent0rdr 5y agoSociety would be better off if patents were abolished.
- fny 5y agoCan you provide justification? In my view, they work when they promote competition and adequately compensate innovation. I know these are broad requirements, but I think that they're better than abolishing patents altogether.
- alpaca128 5y agoThis whole "competition" idea turns into the exact opposite when giant corporations buy others and gain all their patents. Motorola was bought because it came with over 10k patents, that is guaranteed to hurt competition. I think patents make sense to some degree, but they should expire much quicker and should not be transferrable.
- burnished 5y agoCan you demonstrate that it actually works that way?
- fighterpilot 5y agoPerhaps society would be better off with shorter-duration patents.
- henvic 5y agoIndeed: 0.
- kashug 5y agoPatents are a pertect example of something that did make sense back when they were made. It was a trade off for having people share new knowledge which would benefit society as a whole. But as a price they got "monopoly" on using it for a while after sharing the patent. But like many other things, it has been exploited, especially by big corporations. And the patents no longer work as intended. And the big problem is that theres so much money on the line that is it not easy to change. I would assume large corporations already spend absurd amounts of money on lobbying for the patent-rules to work in their favor. Patents as a concept I am all for. It is a good way to make sure that new entrepreneurs can make it to market before "big-corp" steals their idea and just push them out. But they would have to change how they work to stop patent-sharks and the big exploitations by said big-corp.
- amelius 5y agoSomeone should organize a day of (inter)national strike against patents.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hhsbz 5y agoYou say that patents no longer make sense, that they don't work, that they are exploited by "big corporations", but you don't really make an argument as to why you feel that way
- adrian_b 5y agoThe main problem with patents today is that the patent offices validate too many patent applications that do not contain anything new or non-obvious for any professional in their field. Moreover, there are also many patent claims that are accepted and that refer to things that are either impossible or non-economical at the time when the patent is issued, but they are put in the patent to cover future devices that someone will be able to make after the current technological problems are solved. In the distant past, most patent offices required a demonstration with a working device in which all the patent claims were embodied, so such bogus patent claims against future competitors could not be accepted. Now, every year more patents are issued than anytime in the past, but most of them are just garbage that was not patented before just because everyone else would have been ashamed to attempt to file such patent applications. The number of truly valid patents issued per year now is actually less than in the 19th century or at the beginning of the 20th century. The same as for new movie scripts, it becomes more and more difficult to find something really original to which nobody thought before.
- echelon 5y agoNo patents for trolls and giants. Startups and labs should be able to patent so that they have a chance to make it in the market.
- josefx 5y agoAny law operating at the company level will just be gamed with large amounts of shell companies. You just need to take a look at some of the more common tax evasion schemes to see how well that turns out.
- decremental 5y agoA simplistic view that deserves an equally simplistic dismissal.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoPatents as a whole? No. Software/algorithm patents? Yes.
- jason0597 5y agoWhy only software patterns?
- gmueckl 5y agoHardware patents are by nature more narrow because they have to describe specific solutions to a problem. Software patents are often written as the idea of solving a specific problem using software, completely omitting the how. This makes them overly broad. At least one of the Sonos patents in question is of that nature: it merely describes a system of distributed loudspeakers where one loudspeaker can set the volume of other speakers in the group remotely. The claims completely omit any actual solution that accomplishes that.
- MonadIsPronad 5y agoThis strikes me as an excellent point, how software patents tend to lack any actual solution, unlike traditional patents - I hadn't considered that before.
- Ekaros 5y agoI think the process of accepting patents is broken, at least with software. If a reasonable practitioner could read some head-line and come up with a few solutions, there is not anything worth protecting. Ideas themselves should not be patentable in software. On other hand I do think there is still need to protect innovation in more physical things. Like new manufacturing processes or material innovations like using novel chemistry.
- thfuran 5y agoI don't really see any fundamental difference between implementing your idea with big pieces of iron and implementing your idea with small pulses of electricity. If either is patentable, both should be.
- fxtentacle 5y agoI strongly disagree. Without patents, something like the Subminimal Foamer kickstarter would have been impossible. That was one guy inventing a new way to make milk foam and then commercializing it. Without patents, Amazon.com would probably have been flooded with fakes before he finished raising money for the first prototype.
- VelkaMorava 5y agoGreat. Apple patented a rectangle (https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rectangle-with-rounded-corners https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec...), some dude patented a way to update a sports game (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/january-stupid-patent-month-method-updating-video-game-grass https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/january-stupid-patent-...). I am not even getting into the whole patent trolling and companies suing each other because they are infringing upon each other's patents and then settling. But no, for all the evil patents are we must have them, because some guy found a new way to make milk foam. Jesus ducking christ hacker news, this is almost as funny as Paul Graham writing an essay about why VC is great.
- fxtentacle 5y agoFirst off, I just really like milk foam with my coffee. But mainly, my intent was to point out that patents might be a necessary evil to fight off copycats. Without that protection, I cannot imagine how any hardware startup could be successful, because the established players will always have the factories, tools, and experience so that they can scale up faster as soon as a new desired product is found.
- IshKebab 5y agoThis article doesn't even say what the patents are. Useless.
- josefx 5y agoFollow a few links and you get to the complaint filled by Sonos[1]: > Plaintiff Sonos, Inc. (“Sonos” or “Plaintiff”) hereby asserts the following claims for patent infringement of United States Patent Nos. 8,588,949, 9,195,258, 9,219,959, 10,209,953, and 10,439,896 (“patents-in-suit”; attached hereto as Exhibits 1-5 respectively) against Defendant Google LLC (“Google” or “Defendant”) > The innovations captured by these patents cover many important aspects of wireless multi-room audio devices/systems, including, for example, how to set up a playback device on a wireless local area network, how to manage and control groups of playback devices (e.g., how to adjust group volume of playback devices and how to pair playback devices together for stereo sound), and how to synchronize the play back of audio within groups of playback devices. [1]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.769126/gov.uscourts.cacd.769126.1.0_3.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.76...
- tinus_hn 5y agoI wonder how that is going to pan out with JBL and Apple.
- cimnine 5y agoThanks. Here are direct links for the curious: - https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219959B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219959B2 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10209953B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US10209953B2 - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10439896B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US10439896B2 (Edit: Formatting)
- IshKebab 5y agoThanks, here's my summary of claim 1 for each (that's the main bit that matters): - https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2 The ability to add separate speakers to groups, and control their volume via a single master volume control. - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2 Covers two speakers synchronising playback by exchanging timing information between themselves. This one is not very clearly written. - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219959B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219959B2 A playback device that receives audio from the network and then equalises and plays it back, with two different equalisation settings. (This is for stereo output with two smart speakers.) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10209953B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US10209953B2 This is just a better worded and more specific version of the second patent. It describes how you would use timing information to synchronise playback. It's nothing clever - just the very obvious solution of using pings to measure the clock differences between the devices and then delaying the audio appropriately. - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10439896B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US10439896B2 This is a description of the standard way of setting up smart devices - they announce their presence, you connect to them directly, send the wifi details, and then they indicate they have connected. I bet they wish they had just written "device" instead of "playback device" in this patent because then literally every smart device in the world would be violating it! I was at least expecting some sophisticated synchronisation or room measurement stuff. But no, just 5 obvious patents that should never have been granted.
- echelon 5y agoHow many markets can Google enter and trivially kill? I'm a fan of patent trolls being defeated, but Sonos is not a troll. They're being pushed and cajoled by the famgopolies. Both Apple and Google cloned their product, then Google started to shutter access to Google Play Music / YouTube Music. Google is like a capricious god of ancient Greek mythology. It might seem friendly, but it takes what it wants and leaves dead, ruined corpses by the wayside.
- SEMW 5y agoThe problem is that that's not how the patent system works. If the Sonos patent is upheld, it doesn't just stop google from making speakers that synchronize their clocks with each other over a local area network.[0] It stops literally everyone other than Sonos doing that, for 20 years since the patent was filed. Even lone engineers working in their garages. Even if they independently reinvent it, patent infringement doesn't require copying, or even knowledge that the original system or the patent existed. Even if synchronizing clocks is something any skilled distributed systems engineer would think of within 10s of deciding to design such a system.[1] It gives sonos a monopoly over the entire idea, that they can enforce against the world. It's like cheering a law that allows anyone who wore a violet shirt in the last month to be shot, because you know someone who wore a violet shirt who you think deserved it. Maybe, but laws apply to everyone, and you're poisoning the commons just to fuck over that one person. [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195258B2 [1] the mechanism claimed being obvious to someone skilled in the art should be a reason the patent is not valid, but US courts appear to have a history of making that difficult to prove.
- josefx 5y ago> Even if synchronizing clocks is something any skilled distributed systems engineer would think of within 10s of deciding to design such a system.[1] Except the patent you link to doesn't sync the clocks.
- echelon 5y agoI used to be 100% on board with you and totally agree. The problem is that in today's world, a few players dominate the entire industry and can erase up and coming startups by simply pouring engineers and money into problems. Innovation can be copied on the cheap by these titans, leaving the hard working original inventor (companies with products and not trolls) with nothing to show. Small companies with products (not trolls) need something to protect themselves against the giants. Because it certainly isn't a level playing field anymore. Power is concentrated. Google and friends can't be the winners that take all. I don't like patents. But there's no other way to survive when a giant wants to clone your product.
- StreamBright 5y agoSo Sonos is joining Google?
- IAmEveryone 5y agoThey aren’t “guilty”. This is civil law, not criminal.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoThe patent's in the trial are pretty bad. Half are just about devices synchronize state using a LAN. The other half concern the UI and stuff. Maybe these had a bit of innovation in 2003 but there is nothing substantial. I'm sure some pre-network audio equipment had to synchronize state and audio timing so doing it over the LAN is not (IMO) sufficient for a new patent. In any case, software patents should be very strict and last at most 5 years (which is more like 8 years from application to expiry).
- tomaszs 5y agoEspecially if we consider over 50 000 patents Google holds. They even tried to patent ANS compression that was made free for everyone by Jarosław Duda.
- newdude116 5y agoWell, the problem is, like with proof in math, afterwards it is always obvious, if not inevitable.
- knorker 5y agoIf parent post is correct, though, the "innovation" being protected is basically "we used to send signal over wire. Now that both endpoints have LAN, I'll send that signal over the LAN". That, like many other software patents, is not "obvious is retrospect". It's not even "obvious idea at the time", it's less than that. It's just inertia. It's a decisionless decision. It's patenting "not stepping in a puddle".
- tremon 5y agoBut aren't patents supposed to protect implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves? So then "keeping state between autonomous devices connected via LAN" seems like a worthwhile implementation, regardless of whether all the individual components were already existing in other technology domains. Besides, I don't think that consensus-based asynchronous state protocols like Paxos were widely available in 2003 (and even so, implementing Paxos on a resource-constrained device like e.g. an Arduino might still qualify for a patent in 2021).
- henvic 5y agoFor anyone interested in this topic, I recommend the book Do Business WITHOUT Intellectual Property by the patent attorney Stephen Kinsella. https://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/kinsella-do-business-without-ip-2014.pdf https://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/publicati...
- rsaarsoo 5y agoFrom another article[1] about this lawsuit, the Sonos side comments: > "We believe that most people involved in wireless home audio today infringe on our patents in one way or the other." So, either: - most people are stealing their technology, or - most people have come up with the same solution independently. For some reason the second case seems more likely to me. Unfortunately for the patent law it doesn't matter if you invent something independently - you're still infringing.[2] [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/29/21492671/sonos-google-patents-infringement-lawsuit-wireless-audio https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/29/21492671/sonos-google-pat... [2]: https://www.patentprogress.org/2019/08/23/protecting-inventors-independent-invention-as-a-defense/ https://www.patentprogress.org/2019/08/23/protecting-invento...
- oliwarner 5y agoI have a pile of Logitech Squeezeboxes running multiroom audio here, and it does all this sync stuff too, with much of that tech originating from 2001-2004. Things were tight between them and Sonos until a Logitech pulled a Logitech and crippled the hardware lineup before killing the brand. I now wonder if these patents had something to do with it.