ITC Grants Partial Review of Finding That Google Infringes Sonos Patents

The ITC will review the ID’s analysis of whether the products accused of infringing two of the patents (9,195,258 and 10,209,953) “are articles that infringe at the time of importation,” said a notice in docket 337-TA-1191. The commission voted not to review the ID’s “remaining findings” that Google infringed parts of the other three Sonos patents, it said. "We do not use Sonos’ technology, and we compete on the quality of our products and the merits of our ideas," emailed a Google spokesperson Monday. "We disagreed with the preliminary ruling and will continue to make our case in the review process.” Sonos didn't comment.

Written submissions are due Dec. 2, replies Dec. 10, on the public interest ramifications of the limited exclusion and cease and desist orders that Bullock’s ID recommended on Google products, said the notice. The ITC also seeks comments on the amount of the bond it should impose on Google imports if it orders “some form of remedy,” said the notice. The commission postponed to Jan. 6 the target date for completing the investigation.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, under presidential authority, would have 60 days to approve, disapprove or take no action on the ITC’s final determination in the case, said the notice. Google imports would still be entitled to enter the U.S. under bond during the 60-day period, it said. ITC staff recommended, and Bullock in his ID agreed, that a 100% bond on the "entered value" of the infringing Google goods was “appropriate” because Google’s “continued importation of infringing goods during the presidential review period would injure Sonos.”

The notice asks Sonos to submit “proposed remedial orders” for the ITC’s consideration. It also asks Sonos to specify the dates when its asserted patents expire, and to furnish the ITC with the Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheadings under which the infringing Google products are imported. It also wants Sonos to identify all known importers of the Google goods.

Sonos and Google both petitioned the ITC Aug. 27 for a full review of the ID. Sonos “won a clean sweep” when Bullock rejected every Google “validity challenge to every asserted claim,” and found that every accused Google product “infringes one or more of Sonos’s patents,” wrote Sonos in its petition.

Yet Bullock “made a clear error of material fact, misapplied the law” and violated ITC policy when he determined “that this proceeding should be expanded to adjudicate Google’s unfinished redesigns,” said Sonos. “Under this ID, Google may well continue importing every single product by making trivial software changes.” With respect to the 9,195,258 patent, one of the two now under partial ITC review, Bullock “made a clear error of material fact” when he found that the Google goods don’t infringe “the asserted claims either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents,” said Sonos.

Bullock came to “erroneous findings” when he ruled that Google goods infringe the two patents under review, said Google’s petition. The 9,195,258 and 10,209,953 inventions are “sister patents that stem from different branches of the same nearly twenty-year-old continuation chain,” it said.

Google’s accused “audio synchronization approach” does not infringe the 9,195,258 patent because when two accused products are grouped together as first- and second-zone players in a multiroom setup, neither generates and transmits the required information indicating when the audio content is to be played back, said the Google petition. It also argued that its devices do not infringe the 10,209,953 patent “on three independent grounds, each of which warrants review and reversal.”