10 ms·
For example, these changes mean you'll no longer be able to control the volume of a group of speakers. Instead, you'll have to change the volume on each individ
by kleiba 5y ago
For example, these changes mean you'll no longer be able to control the volume of a group of speakers. Instead, you'll have to change the volume on each individually. It also means you'll no longer be able to use the volume buttons on your phone to control a speaker group.
Not here to defend Google, but how can something trivial like that even be patentable?
- Mikeb85 5y agoThe patent office hands them out like candy... "Rounded corners" anyone?
- CodesInChaos 5y agoWasn't that a design patent, which is closer to a trademark than an actual patent? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
- Mikeb85 5y agoWell it obviously didn't hold up. IMO Apple had a copyright, maybe, it shouldn't have been patentable though. Design != technology so shouldn't be patentable.
- tinus_hn 5y agoThat’s why it’s a design patent, which is completely different concept from an invention patent. For one, it lasts forever.
- dmitriid 5y agoThe "rounded corners" narrative needs to die. It wasn't just rounded corners. It was a combination of design features for a specific device that, among other things, included rounded corners.
- Mikeb85 5y agoStill way too broad...
- Retric 5y agoIf it covers even a dozen different trivial choices then the end result is extremely narrow.
- garyfirestorm 5y agoMy car looks like a sports car. Not just one corner rounded but look at all the aspects. Only I shall be able to make sports cars. I patented it. /s
- dmitriid 5y ago> My car looks like a sports car. You will then be surprised that car manufacturers often engage in court battles against Chinese knock-offs.
- Retric 5y agoLooks like a sports car isn’t a specific design. Compare a Bugatti Veyron with a 911 Turbo. They both have lot’s of rounded edges but somehow they are very easy to tell apart as are every brand of hyper car on the market. This wasn’t two companies that happened to come up with the same design, this was just blatant copying of pointless aesthetic details, which is illegal.
- dmitriid 5y ago> They both have lot’s of rounded edges but somehow they are very easy to tell apart as are every brand of hyper car on the market. Which is very relevant in this case as in the court Samsung's lawyer couldn't tell iPad and Galaxy Tab apart from 10 feet away: https://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/14/samsung_lawyer_couldnt_tell_ipad_and_galaxy_tab_apart_from_10_feet_away https://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/14/samsung_lawyer_co...
- lkxijlewlf 5y agoThe argument I see often is things like this seem trivial after the fact. But isn't that what computers are supposed to be for; networking and connecting devices so that one can control them easily?
- nicce 5y agoYes, but is the patent about concept or specific tecnical solution? If it is about the concept, it blows my mind…
- zzt123 5y agoOne-click buy was a patent so…
- trentnix 5y agoAnd Amazon paid a number of talking heads and tech luminaries to help them with the blowback they were getting at the time for such a trivial patent. Scumbags, all.
- halpert 5y agoIt's not about the concept, it's about the specific UI they used to do it. However, there are not many ways to represent the concept in a UI, which is where Google is running into a problem.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ianferrel 5y agoIt's true that genuine advances often seem trivial after the fact, and it can sometimes be hard to distinguish them. In this case, having one volume control multiple connected speakers is how wired stereos have worked for many decades, so while it might have been state of the art in the 1930s, Sonos wasn't involved.
- zzt123 5y agoI bet there’s even a patent for “adjust volumes dynamically per speaker based on real-time positional data to increase volume in a balanced way when possible”. If not, I claim this post demonstrates it’s an obvious thing to implement, so long as the user has their phone or another device equipped with mics on them.
- The-Bus 5y agoSonos does part of this: when you set up the speaker it sends out pings that are picked up by your phone which you have to wave around like you're doing a cleansing ceremony. To my knowledge it doesn't do this dynamically.
- aaronharnly 5y agoThey have quote-unquote "Automatic Trueplay™" for the mobile speakers (Move and Roam), which they say "automatically re-tunes as you play new content and bring your Sonos product to different locations." https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3569?language=en_US https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3569?language=en_US
- strikelaserclaw 5y agoKinda crappy but i'm sure google has tons of patents on things we would find trivial as well, as far as i'm concerned, let shitty mega corps duke it out.
- chaosharmonic 5y agoThat's also a feedback loop though, that exists in part specifically because of how easy and common patent trolling has been. They have to have patents over stupid trivial things because if they don't register these someone else will, and then suddenly it's an even bigger waste of time and money for everyone involved. There's a reason orgs like the Alliance for Open Media -- a Google-led initiative -- use licensing that explicitly grants you use of the patents owned by member orgs, but also explicitly revoke those if you sue any of them over a patent claim.
- mason55 5y ago> They have to have patents over stupid trivial things because if they don't register these someone else will, and then suddenly it's an even bigger waste of time and money for everyone involved. It also works as a way to keep incumbents in power. Say Google has 100 important mobile OS patents and Apple has 100 important mobile OS patents. It makes sense for them to cross-license. But a new mobile OS entrant has nothing of interest to Google or Apple and so no way to get access to those important patents.
- josephcsible 5y ago> let shitty mega corps duke it out The problem with that is that we the customers end up as collateral damage.
- strikelaserclaw 5y agoi've begun to believe that customers have no power in first place. The most recent example being how youtube just came in and removed the dislike count, and no one could do anything, not only that i bet youtube usage hasn't gone down. These big companies are so entrenched in our minds at this point that they could essentially do whatever and get away with it.
- bagacrap 5y agousing volume buttons to control volume... I don't even... why didn't they just grant Sonos a patent on buttons?
- halpert 5y agoFrom my reading of the patent, it's not that the concept of speaker groupings was patented. Rather, a specific UI for showing and modifying the groupings and adjusting the volume. Unfortunately, there aren't many different ways to represent groupings in a UI.
- duxup 5y agoUI to do that seems awfully basic.
- lostmsu 5y agoDoesn't regular volume slider controls multiple remote speakers in case of connected Bluetooth headphones?
- oarsinsync 5y agoDepends on whether you consider a pair of bluetooth headphones as a single device or multiple devices. I'm unaware of many devices that output audio to multiple distinct bluetooth targets simultaneously. Bose have that feature as part of their app, but I don't think it's a standard thing as a rule.
- joshuamorton 5y agoAirpods and clones thereof?
- 5y ago
- alok-g 5y agoThe system has not been able to define a solid test for "non-obviousness" which is one of the criteria for patentability. As a result, in my experience, approvals are based most notably on "novelty" -- If no one has seemingly done in the past, it tends to get approved. In my opinion, that's what has gone wrong with the system, i.e., not the theoretical criteria for patentability but its execution.
- jjoonathan 5y agoIf the USPTO gets to keep any part of the fees it charges, it is heavily incentivized to allow silly patents through the "non-obvious" gate. Defining "non-obvious" might be tricky, but fixing the incentives would be comparatively straightforward if they are half as broken as they appear to be.
- dpark 5y agoI’m pretty sure the USPTO is not a money making venture. It’s chronically understaffed and ill equipped to deal with the volume of bullshit it receives.
- hardolaf 5y agoUSPTO is mostly self-funded. If they collect fewer fees, then their budget gets slashed. This model was introduced under Reagan.
- esens 5y agoThe core problem is that for someone knowledgeable in the field, everything becomes straightforward, but the further away you are from the field, the more novel it becomes -- this is true across the board. Even the great accomplishments where people win Nobel prizes, often it can be argued that it was going to happen anyhow because it was the next step in scientific progress given the context. Thus defining "non-obviousness" is super hard to do -- because it is all context dependent and humans are like a million monkeys inventing everything that can possibly be invented in aggregate.
- jcranberry 5y agoAmazon had one click buying patented for a long time. It should have expired by now but I don't know whether there's any mechanism to extend it.
- seemaze 5y agoI've had BlueSound wireless hifi speakers for some time. Originally the control app was also capable of adjusting speaker volume with the volume buttons on your phone, which I quite enjoyed. It was deprecated (along with the ability to play your iPhone's music library over wifi.. à la airplay) several years ago, presumably due to patent/licensing issues.
- xyzzy21 5y agoYes. That's how it works. 99% of all inventions are "obvious" once you understand how they work - but before that no one can imagine it. If "buy" buttons can be patented, pretty much anything can be.
- Someone 5y agoAlso, what exactly do these patents cover? Every wired stereo I’ve seen had a volume control that changed the volume on all speakers. I’m sure such systems were already common half a century ago.
- gadders 5y agoNo-one remember the Amazon one-click buy patent? [1] A lot of people weren't very happy about it [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click [2] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/patent_archive.html http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/patent_archive....
- mdoms 5y agoLook, everyone on this website is going to agree with you that the patents are pretty silly. But that doesn't change the two central facts of the article, 1. Sonos holds such patents 2. Google (the trillion dollar company) is actively making its products worse for users instead of licensing said patents. These are not free products like GMail, these are products that people have paid for, and these are not trivial features, these are features that were actively marketed for the product. Perhaps we could discuss this, the actually interesting topic, instead of the same boring discussion about the broken US patent system again and again.
- km3r 5y agoDon't feed the [patent] trolls. I used this feature, and will miss it, but would rather Google not give in to abuse of the patent system. On the otherhand, I will no longer consider Sonos products. Be better Sonos. Bluesound seems like the better alternative that is pushing for innovation over pure profit.
- tinus_hn 5y agoThe time to stop discussing the broken patent system is when it is no longer broken. That time is not now.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoHuh, I had noticed that my sonos setup did that and wondered why other systems hadn't gotten around to it.