by Dennis Crouch
Judge Alsup issued his controversial unenforceability decision in Sonos v. Google back in October 2023, and the appeal has been pending since then. The Federal Circuit recent scheduled arguments for July 10, 2025. I wanted to offer a bit of a preview of these upcoming oral arguments.
In 2020, Sonos sued Google for infringing its “zone scenes” patents, which cover techniques for grouping networked speakers into saved scenes (including overlapping groups of speakers). U.S. Patent Nos. 10,848,885 and 10,469,966. A jury found Google liable and awarded $30 million in damages. N.D.Cal. Judge William Alsup then took the unusual step of throwing out the verdict. Ruling on post-trial motions, Judge Alsup found the two patents unenforceable due to prosecution laches and invalid for lack of written description support. Sonos promptly appealed, and it is that appeal that is now pending.
Judge Alsup’s Decision: In his 55-page order, Judge Alsup found that Sonos had engaged in a “daisy chain” continuation strategy to keep its patent family alive for over 13 years. Sonos filed an initial provisional application in 2006, but did not present the asserted overlapping-scene claims for examination until 2019. By then, Google and others had already developed and sold products implementing the overlapping-zone technology.
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