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- Big tech giants Apple and Google both lost patent lawsuits this week.
- On Friday, a jury said Apple should pay Optis $ 300 million for patent infringement.
- On Saturday, a judge ruled that Google violated five audio technology patents owned by Sonos.
Big tech companies are losing hundreds of millions of dollars in patent lawsuits as the industry faces increased scrutiny from lawmakers for anti-competitive behavior.
On Friday, a jury ruled that Apple should pay Optis Wireless Technology $ 300 million in the company’s second patent trial, Reuters reported.
One day later,
His bone
won a patent battle against Google, arguing that big tech giant stole Sonos’ smart speaker technology and lowered their prices, according to a New York Times report.
Big Tech’s losses this week are part of a recent spike in patent litigation. During the pandemic, patent lawsuits increased for the first time since 2015, according to Lex Machina’s 2021 Patent Litigation Report. Google has faced the highest number of patent lawsuits in the country, defending a total of 48 cases.
“It’s no surprise that the number of patent lawsuits has increased amid a pandemic. In times of economic uncertainty, companies tend to look for other ways to monetize their assets,” said Laura P. Masurovsky at the World Intellectual Property Review.
“I don’t think it’s a blip,” she added. “I think this is indicative of a cyclical trend that we have seen in patent litigation in the past.”
Last March, a jury ruled that Apple should pay Personalized Media Communications LLC $ 308.5 million for patent infringement. The iPhone maker told Reuters that “cases like this, brought by companies that neither manufacture nor sell products, stifle innovation and end up hurting consumers.”
Apple supporters say companies like PMC and Optis are “patent trolls,” a term used to describe companies using patents as legal weapons, as opposed to a means of product innovation.
Apple issued a similar statement on Friday, claiming that “Optis does not manufacture any products and that its only activity is to sue companies using the patents they accumulate. We will continue to defend against their attempts to obtain unreasonable payments. for the patents they acquire. “
Companies on the other side of Big Tech’s recent patent lawsuits are thinking differently, claiming that big companies are using their influence to “crush” competitors.
On Saturday, a judge ruled that Google had infringed five of Sonos’ patents – if the preliminary ruling is upheld, products like Google Home and Pixel smartphones could be banned from importing.
“This decision reaffirms the strength and breadth of our portfolio, marking a promising step in our long-term quest to defend our innovation against big tech monopoly hijacking,” said Eddie Lazarus, Chief Legal Officer of Sonos, in a statement.
Sonos executives have also said that Amazon Echo products are copying Sonos technology, The New York Times reported. Amazon denies these claims.
“We are disappointed that Sonos has taken these lawsuits instead of continuing negotiations in good faith,” a Google spokesperson told The Times. We dispute these claims and will vigorously defend them. ”
Google, Apple and Amazon did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on this story.
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