Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

inc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 302 posts

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#211

Post by dpark »

dmitriid wrote: post #156
Retric wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks 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.

> 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_co...

That’s because the platonic ideal for a tablet is basically a thin plate of glass with rounded corners.

Hell, even my kindle basically looks like this. My TV looks like this except for the rounded corners (which it doesn’t need because it’s not intended to be held).

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#212

Post by Retric »

pmontra wrote: post #202
dmitriid wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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_co...

I don't want to get into this old issue but I just noticed that all my notebooks are rectangular with sharp corners regardless of the manufacturer. I mean paper notebooks. It would be silly to patent and sue for that and with the hindsight of 11+ years that was a silly design patent to award. My Samsung from 2019 has rounded corners. I can't even remember how it ended except that some lawyers made a zillion of money…

It was actually the specific curve used that was at issue, but behind that phone designs are not limited to 4 rounded off corners or sharp edges.

Take say the blackberry bold 9930 it’s bottom is a single curve from edge to edge without any flat parts. Considering these phones had a single button at the bottom a curve like that would have simply saved material without compromising screen size and better fit into peoples hands. There are actually a host of odd ruggedized smartphones like: https://www.catphones.com/en-us/cat-s48c-smartphone/ Even for laptops you get a lot of odd edges look at the HP’s Omen X 2S.

Don’t want any of those looks? It’s fine there where plenty of other things they could have done to differentiate these phones like say volume buttons next to the center one, or a back button for web pages etc. It’s only when you copy everything that it’s no longer your style it’s Apple’s.

Net result in the US: The jury trial for damages concluded on May 24, 2018, awarding Apple $539 million, which includes $399 million for damages of Samsung's products sold that infringed on the patents. Germany acted much faster and simply blocked Galaxy 10.1 sales.

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#213

Post by jollybean »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #130
katbyte wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well because of this I’ll never buy another Sonos product, and recommend everyone I know to something else. I wonder if lost revenue from people like me will make up for any gains here.

Conversely, I’d rather buy (and intend to) from Sonos versus Google considering Google’s product track record (killing everything in short order). Using patents to defend yourself from a Big Tech company is the unfortunate reality.

They weren't defending, they were attacking.

Sonos didn't develop anything new or novel in this case - they patented something which arguably should not be patentable, which is the ability to adjust the volumes on all speakers at once.

It's rational for companies to patent everything under the sun as a defensive moat, so they don't get themselves trolled, but this is trolling on their part.

If Sonos sat on this patent, that would be fine, but they're trying to troll other companies, it doesn't matter that it's Google and we hate them, it's dumb.

If Google had copied some core special tech that was the result of Sonos R&D that would be a different story.

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#214

Post by phicoh »

esens wrote: post #118
alok-g wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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.

The 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-obvi…

I think the test is simple:

give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent and not how the patent implements the claim.

If the experts can find a way to implement the claim in a relatively short period, then the claim is obvious and should be rejected.

Of course it is possible that a more specific claim is not obvisous. For example, if there are specific performance requirements. If the initial claims are obvisious, the inventor can try again with more narrow claims.

Another requirement that is sorely needed is that an expert in the field can actually understand the patent in a reasonable period of time.

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#215

Post by K0balt »

I mean, it sounds like a stupid patent, but if the court says so then it’s valid. We either live with the rule of law or we don’t. Also, we need to fix IP law, but I digress.

But… wtf Google? Do you have some kind of “we don’t negotiate with people we stole from” ultimatum, or are you just trying to piss off the people that bought into your dystopian nightmare buttons?

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#216

Post by mdoms »

kleiba wrote: post #42

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?

Look, 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.

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#217

Post by jollybean »

josho wrote: post #145
ceras wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all companies have an aggressive patent strategy. Historically, I believe Google felt negatively about software patents, and had fewer than other tech companies. Eventually they bought a large portfolio of patents (e.g. through the Motorola acquisition; when they later sold Motorola, they kept the patents) so that they could use them defensively, because not having enough patents became a liability. Even after th…

Young companies typically aren’t aggressive on their patents because they are seeking growth. When their growth stalls out that’s when a shift to monetizing their patents occur. I’m starting to understand the capitalism is cancer arguments. Infinite growth is unsustainable. So inevitably companies that were once great need to use tactics like this to continue their infinite growth trajectory.

Young companies with 'great patents' will leverage them both offensively and defensively if it makes sense to do that.

Sonos, in this case, is 'kind of' a younger company. They're not making huge profits and 'free cash flow from a giant' would be huge for them.

Mostly, patents are used defensively, so that companies big and small, don't get sued by trolls or steamrolled.

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#218

Post by halpert »

tssva wrote: post #193
halpert wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, it’s not the controlling of the speakers that was patented, it was the UI for grouping them and controlling them. Bluetooth headphones generally have the same controls as normal headphones, so they wouldn’t apply to this patent.

This is incorrect. The patent doesn't cover any specific UI. Part of what the patent covers is a controller on a network presenting a UI to control volume on a group of speakers not a specific implementation of the UI.

There were a number of patents in question. I'm specifically referring to this one: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2/en

Here is the abstract, you can see that it clearly is about the interface of creating and controlling the play group:

> A multimedia controller including a processor, the controller configured to: provide a user interface for a player group, wherein the player group includes a plurality of players in a local area network, and wherein each player is configured to playback a multimedia output from a multimedia source; accept an input to facilitate formation of the player group, indicating that at least two of the players in the local area network are to be included in the player group; for each of the plurality of players within the player group, accept an input to adjust a volume associated with the player, that causes the player to adjust its volume; and accept an input to adjust a volume associated with the player group, wherein the input to adjust the volume associated with the group causes the players in the player group to adjust their volumes.

> This application is a Continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 12/035,112, entitled “User Interfaces For Controlling And Manipulating Groupings In A Multi-Zone Media System”

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#219

Post by simplestats »

nathanyz wrote: post #183
esens wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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-obvi…

A lot of things once explained seem obvious, but clearly weren't or they would have existed before. I like to explain it as similar to wheels being circles. Of course that is obvious once you see a circle shaped wheel, but the insight to do that in the first place is the novelty element. Similar advances are happening in every little niche industry and novelty implies non-obvious.

This is certainly the ideal scenario. But typically, they didn't exist before because they are incremental improvements based on things which didn't exist before and use technology which didn't exist before.

The claim that they are obvious is based on the fact that anyone who is involved in the production of those prior incremental steps can see what can be done as the next increment. People are working on producing wheels using molds and certain materials. Across town, someone starts selling a new kind of mold or material. The "inventor" applies it to the molding of wheels.

Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied

#220

Post by makapuf »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #108
josephcsible wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let shitty mega corps duke it out The problem with that is that we the customers end up as collateral damage.

i'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.

Again, Customers being advertisers and content producers have some power. You dont.
Post reply on HN