Jury awards Sonos $32.5 million over speaker patent infringement claim against Google

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Sonos, an audio system company based in Santa Barbara, was awarded $32.5 million in a patent lawsuit against Google's parent company, Alphabet.

The lawsuit was part of a pair of patent infringement claims made by Sonos over both its speaker and home app patents.

The San Francisco jury found that Alphabet had only infringed on Sonos' speaker patent and ordered the company to pay a $2.30 royalty for each of the approximately 14 million speakers sold with the proprietary technology.

Sonos had originally sought financial damages up to $3 billion.

The two companies had initially collaborated to have Sonos speakers support Google Play Music, but by 2016, Sonos made claims in a court filing that Google had used their collaboration to "blatantly and knowingly" use some of Sonos' speaker technology in Google's home speaker released that year.

Sonos has also previously filed patent infringement claims against Google in January of 2020 over the Google Home and Nest audio line of products. The U. S. International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Sonos' claims and placed an import ban on several google devices.