Federal Circuit judges sided Wednesday with a patent board ruling that invalidated claims in yet another Google patent, a key development in the ongoing infringement lawsuit against wireless speaker brand Sonos.
After hearing oral arguments Monday, the Federal Circuit upheld a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling that Google LLC lost in late 2022. This decision marks a significant win for Sonos Inc., a Santa Barbara, California-based company engaged in litigation with Google since 2020.
In a unanimous, unsigned decision, Federal Circuit judges affirmed the PTAB ruling without further comment.
The patent in question covered ideas developed by Google engineers related to “personalized network searching.” Google had cited this patent in a suit the company filed against Sonos in 2020, five months after Sonos first accused Google of infringing its wireless audio technology patents in Google Home, Pixel, and Nest products.
Sonos successfully convinced the PTAB that the majority of claims in one of the Google patents, issued in 2018, could be found in language contained in patent paperwork dating back to the year 2000. Google’s appeal hinged entirely on arguing that PTAB judges had adopted the wrong set of definitions for the terms in the patent.
