Strategy in TECH...
A jury has come to a unanimous verdict in the matter of Sonos, Inc. vs. Google, LLC, a patent infringement lawsuit initially filed on September 22, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for California Northern District in San Francisco. In the case of one of the two patents under consideration – the ‘885 patent – the jury sided with Sonos, finding that Google products did infringe upon the Sonos patent and awarded them a judgment of $32.5 million.
On the eve of the upcoming patent trial in the matter of Sonos, Inc. [Nasdaq: SONO], vs. Google, LLC [Nasdaq: GOOG], both parties had submitted motions for summary judgment trying to win as many points as possible while also clearing away as many outstanding issues as possible to limit the number of factual matters to be determined at trial by a jury. It has been a long and winding road to get to this point, but one thing seems clear to me, Sonos may have gotten more than they bargained for, as this action with Google, their largest adversary by far, appears to have taken a bit of a toll.
After years of driving the economy, Big Tech has suddenly hit a rough road. By now you’ve likely heard about layoffs in tech…lots and lots of layoffs. According to Layoffs.fyi, as of this writing, more than 104,000 tech jobs have been lost in just the first six weeks of 2023. But what is behind the struggles of these Big Tech players?
Just one day after I posted the story Tech Takes a Turn…Downwards, we learned of more layoffs hitting tech, including Google parent Alphabet, Spotify, Vox Media, and more. These additional reports of even more tech layoffs only help to affirm the reality of a slowdown hitting big tech and other areas that are adjacent to tech, such as media focused on tech.
The tables have apparently been turned on Sonos, Inc. which now finds itself the subject of an investigation into alleged patent infringement by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC). The agency decided to launch an investigation of Sonos after receiving a complaint from Alphabet, Inc.’s Google division. There is one simple question: is Sonos a patent infringer?
After two years of tussling in courts, with both sides registering a mix of wins and losses on various matters, you’d think some kind of settlement would be in order. But last week, Google intensified its patent war with Sonos by opening up yet another front with two new lawsuits on voice control and other technologies, leading me to believe that any type of settlement is yet down the road.
More and more evidence continues to emerge suggesting that the economy is undergoing a fundamental shift, a turn if you will, that will at least slow economic growth – and may lead to recession. Perhaps the clearest indicator of that is the turn taken by tech, which has lost a trillion dollars in value in just three days of trading on the stock market. For the last two-plus years, tech was the driving force behind a dramatic economic expansion during the pandemic. What is happening now?
With COVID now seemingly in decline, on Monday Google employees (Googlers?) began the process of returning to work at the company’s various headquarter and other office locations around the country. The company is requiring they work at least three days a week in the office, continuing to work remotely for the other two.
Google is hardly alone in pulling employees back to the office, Apple employees return next week and most major companies have announced dates for office life to begin again. Will this kill remote work and have an impact on the custom integration business?
I don’t think it’s possible for me to overstate the significance of what just happened last week when, in a final decision from the U.S. International Trade Commission, the full panel affirmed a commission judge’s ruling that Google had in fact infringed on five patents held by Sonos. It is a real-life version of the bible story of David versus Goliath. Make no mistake, this David’s win may change our industry in fundamental ways.
A hearing before a California federal judge brought an ugly exchange between attorneys for both Sonos and Google – with each side pointing their finger at the other and accusing them of bad faith. That attorneys got ugly against their counterparts is not in itself surprising. However, the speed with which this dispute devolved to that point was a surprise.
