Google Will Restore The Feature Of The Group Of Talks On Its Devices After Victory In The Sonos Patent Case

Google moved quickly to restore some of the features and functionality previously removed from its various products in response to the Sonos patent violation case. After his win in federal court on Friday, October 6, the company plans to lift restrictions implemented in the speaker group.

"Recently we made changes to speaker groups for Nest devices such as speakers, display, and Chromecast where certain devices can only be part of one speaker group at a time in the Google Home app," the company wrote on its Nest community blog.

"Given this legal decision, we are pleased to share that we will cancel this change. The device will be able to be part of several speaker groups and you will no longer have a mistake trying to add the device to additional groups," Google added.

Google says it has started implementing these changes and expects them to reach all Google Home devices and apps for Android in 48 hours.

It's interesting that Google has taken this action. Sonos said they plan to appeal Judge William Alsup's decision, which overturned an initial verdict of $32.5 million, but Google seems confident that this decision will not be reversed in the short term.

As is usual in this kind of case, the protracted legal battle between Sonos and Google has hurt customers. It's good to see that this grouping feature is returned to the affected product owners, but Google Assistant remains absent from Sonos' latest smart speakers.

On Tuesday, October 10, Google filed for patent reform and accused Sonos of "swimming time and resources" with patent-violating cases.