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I don't understand the ruling. Why would it be illegal to start to enforce your patent later into your exclusivity period, is there a clause that says that? I'l
by lucb1e 3y ago
I don't understand the ruling. Why would it be illegal to start to enforce your patent later into your exclusivity period, is there a clause that says that? I'll agree that waiting 13 years will let you collect 13 years of royalties instead of the 1 year you might have gotten if you had sued after 1 year, so it's a dick move to squeeze more money out, but if this is what Sonos is referring to about the ruling being 'wrong on facts and law', I could see their viewpoint even if I don't agree with the law.
In Dutch consumer law, I know that you can't come to the retailer 23 months into owning a product to say that the power button was broken from day one and expect a free repair. You need to tell them that in a timely manner for warranty to be provided. If there is a clause in USA patent law that says the same, then the ruling would make sense, but the article doesn't really say, and if there were such a clause, then how could they have won the lower court case? So I would assume there is no such clause.
And the part about modifying your patent documents "discreetly", err, is that not perjury?
- jsnell 3y agoThey didn't start enforcing a patent 13 years later, because they didn't even have a patent to enforce. Basically Sonos took a patent application that had been filed 13 years earlier but not granted (due to prior art), modified it to add a feature Google was already shipping but Sonos wasn't, and resubmitted it for a new evaluation. The patent was granted but backdated to the time of the original filing in 2006.
- lucb1e 3y agoWait, if Sonos tried to patent a feature that Google was already shipping (in their products, I assume you mean) at the time of filing, why was that not also rejected for prior art?
- jsnell 3y agoMy reading of the ruling[0] is that Sonos lied to the patent examiner, and claimed that all of the new material had been in the application since 2006 rather than having been just inserted. > On Sonos’s representation that its amendment to the specification and figures contained no new matter, the patent examiner allowed the amendments to the applications for the patents in suit (They then proceeded to lie about this to the judge in the original trial as well.) [0] https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/znpnznkjgpl/GOOGLE%20SONOS%20TRIAL%20ruling.pdf https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/znpnznkjgpl/...
- GuB-42 3y agoWhat they did is that they filed a provisional application in 2006. This is not a patent, it is just a simple way of saying "I did this". This way, you can release your invention and apply for an actual patent later without the risk of having it rejected for prior art. A provisional application doesn't grant you exclusivity, only the right to file a patent later, where later normally means less than a year. Then Sonos filed a patent in 2018 based on that provisional application, well after that reasonable 1 year delay. By the time, the industry has built something based on that 2006 non-patent. Essentially, Sonos tried to patent the thing retroactively.