Patents Held Unenforceable, Nullifying $32 Million Verdict

• Pages: 23-23
• Date: 01 July 2025
• Published date: 01 July 2025
• Author: Josephine M. Bahn
• Subject Matter: Administrative & Public Law

Published i n Litigation News Volu me 50, Number 4 , Summer 2025. © 2 025 by the Americ an Bar Associa tion. Reprodu ced with permiss ion. All rights r eserved. Thi s information or any p ortion

thereof may not b e copied or dis seminated in a ny form or by any mea ns or stored in a n electroni c database or r etrieval syst em without the ex press writt en consent of th e American B ar Associa tion.

federal judge threw out a $32.5 million patent

infringement verdict against Google after deter-

mining the plaintiff waited too long to enforce its

claimed patents. In Sonos, Inc. v. Google LLC, the

court held that Google should not be liable for

Sonos’s claims based on old patents primarily because Sonos

waited until the industry had developed “something new and,

only then, [did the] inventor com[e] out of the woodwork to

say that he had come up with the idea rst.”

The court’s decision to overturn the jury verdict came

after a multi-year battle that began with Sonos alleging that

Google’s smart speakers and several other products are based

on Sonos’s technology. Sonos had led provisional patent

applications regarding that technology in 2006. A provisional

patent application is one that does not include a formal pat-

ent claim, oath, or declaration, but will establish a ling date

for the applicant’s invention.

Sonos sued in 2020, accusing Google of copying Sonos’s

technology in wireless audio devices, and claimed that Sonos

had established its patent rights to this technology as of

2006 when it led its provisional applications. Sonos initially

requested that the court ban all U.S. sales of Google’s speak-

ers, smartphones, and laptops. The parties engaged in multiple

other lawsuits relating to technology ownership after the initial

case was led.

In May 2023, one of the cases proceed to trial. The court

ordered that certain afrmative defenses would not be ruled

on until after the jury had decided the question of infringe-

ment. Sonos obtained the large jury award based on a single

patent, but Google sought post-trial relief from the verdict on

the grounds of laches. Google argued that Sonos had delayed

applying for the actual patents for more than a decade after

its provisional applications, and only after Google had intro-

duced Google Home and Chromecast Audio—the technology

that arguably infringed on Sonos’s patents.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of

California held that it was improper for Sonos to attempt to

connect its existing patents to the provisional applications

led in 2006 for multi-room audio technology, so as to try

to prove that its technology predated Google’s devices. The

court also held that connecting a 2019 patent application to

the 2006 provisional application, when Google began sell-

ing its alleged infringing technology in 2015, negated Sonos’s

argument. The judge determined that the products Google

launched in 2015 “anticipated” the 2019 patents and there-

fore rendered them invalid.

The court determined that Sonos’s attempt to circumvent

the patent system unfairly enriched Sonos and failed to pro-

tect other technology companies in the arena. Specically, it

concluded that “it is wrong that our patent system was used in

this way. With its constitutional underpinnings, this system is

intended to promote and protect innovation. Here, by contrast,

it was used to punish an innovator and to enrich a pretender

by delay and sleight of hand. It has taken a full trial to learn

this sad fact, but, at long last, a measure of justice is done.”

ABA Litigation Section leaders observe that the judge

could overturn the jury’s verdict because an equitable defense

remained available to Google during the post-trial portion of

the litigation. “A plaintiff’s case never gets better with time.

Although deferring afrmative defenses until after a trial is

certainly unusual, technically laches is an equitable defense,

which should therefore be decided by the judge, rather than the

jury,” says Aaron Krauss, Philadelphia, PA, Litigation Section

Book Board member.“If the judge did not have the ability to

rule on laches, it would have been interesting to see if the judge

would have overturned the verdict under Rule 50(b),” he adds.

Krauss also suggests that the advent of Google’s late use of the

defenses allowed the judge to overturn a high-dollar verdict

because he disagreed with the merits of the jury’s outcome.

Deferring a decision on Google’s afrmative defenses yielded

both strategic and practical benets. “It worked out well for

them. It was strategic in that it seems like a good idea to nar-

row the issues for trial to simply infringement. It makes the

trial of the case less complicated, especially where you have

a good number of defenses. It streamlines the trial. The judge

will have a lot more time to consider the facts of a given case,”

adds Matt C. Acosta, Dallas, TX, Co-Chair of the Section’s

Intellectual Property Litigation Committee.

RESOURCE

Grant Hackl ey, “Patent Incivility Ju stif‌ies Fee Shifting ,” Litigation

News (May 12, 2022) .

Patents Held Unenforceable,

Nullifying $32 Million Verdict

By Josephine M. Ba hn, Litigation News Associ ate Editor

SUMMER 2 025 • VOL. 50 NO. 4

23 | ABA LITIGATION SECTIO N

CIVIL PROCEDURE UPDATE