A federal judge recently found that two patents belonging to Sonos are invalid. These same patents were being used by Sonos to stop Google from allowing Nest and Google speakers from belonging to multiple speaker groups in the same household.
For us consumers, it was a silly legal thing that we had to deal with. However, with this new ruling, Google can now flip the switch back on and allow users to do what they originally could before Sonos came and stopped the fun.
We recently made a change to speaker groups for Nest speakers, displays, and Chromecast where certain devices can only belong to one speaker group at a time in the Google Home app. A federal judge has found that two patents that Sonos accused our devices of infringing are invalid.
In light of this legal decision we’re happy to share that we will be rolling back this change. Devices will be able to belong to multiple speaker groups and you will no longer run into an error when trying to add a device to additional groups. We’re beginning to roll out this update immediately and expect it to go live across our devices and the Home App on Android in the next 48 hours. The change will also be coming soon to the Home App on iOS.
As Google mentions, you’ll see this go live for all devices within the next 48 hours.
Google has a whole blog post on the court’s decision from its general counsel if you’re interested in learning more. In the meantime, let’s go make some speaker groups!
// Google Nest