Interview with Sonos CEO and CLO about Google lawsuit

From The Verge:

Sonos has long accused other tech giants of stealing its patents and technology, but in 2020, it actually sued Google for patent infringement. Sonos said that it had disclosed details about how its technology worked during negotiations to integrate Google’s voice assistant and that Google had copied the tech and then released cheaper products it subsidized with revenue from search advertising. Sonos recently won that lawsuit at the US International Trade Commission, which ruled that Google infringed all five patents Sonos brought to court. In response, Google had to change how some of its speakers worked, including reducing some functionality. Google is, of course, appealing, but you just don’t see this very often.

To talk about when a company like Sonos makes the decision to head to the courts and, increasingly, Congress, I sat down with Patrick Spence, the CEO of Sonos, and Eddie Lazarus, his chief legal officer. Software patents are pretty controversial to begin with, so I wanted to understand how Patrick and Eddie decided to take the risk of a lawsuit here. Sonos claims Google actually infringes over 150 patents, so how did they pick five to sue over?

Patrick and Eddie have also both testified before Congress in the past few years, specifically about competition and antitrust issues. Sonos is a small public company compared to the tech giants, and they both say their tech gets ripped off all the time. It’s a big claim, and I wanted to push on it a little — and push on when that kind of lobbying effort becomes important enough to spend time on.

This is a fun one. Patrick and Eddie are pretty direct, even though interviewing a CEO with his lawyer in the room sometimes got a little dicey.