CCIA to ITC: Banning Google Smart Speakers Would Harm US Consumers

The audio functionality that's at the heart of the Sonos patent fight with Google “is only a small piece” of what Google smart speakers provide, and excluding them from U.S. importation “would harm U.S. consumers and the U.S. economy,” commented the Computer & Communications Industry Association Thursday (login required) in the International Trade Commission’s 337-TA-1191 docket.

The ITC voted last month to grant partial review of its chief administrative law judge’s decision that Google violated Section 337 of the 1930 Tariff Act by importing smart speakers and other goods that infringed parts of five Sonos multiroom audio patents (see 2111210001). The action appeared to inch the ITC a step closer to ordering the Google import ban that the judge recommended, and the agency sought comments on the public interest ramifications of such an exclusion order. Google and Sonos also filed comments Thursday, both asking for confidential treatment. Reply comments are due Dec. 10.

For all the Google devices subject to the proposed exclusion orders, “the overwhelming majority of the ways in which they are used have nothing to do with the patented multiroom audio functionality,” said CCIA, whose members include Google but not Sonos. “This alone creates an imbalanced economic harm wherein the U.S. economy and consumers are barred from access to a wide range of computing functionality,” it said.

The proposed Google import ban “also raises significant public health, safety, and welfare concerns,” said CCIA. Most American homes “rely solely on wireless devices for voice telephony,” it said, quoting from a December 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. About 15% of U.S. adults rely on smartphones as their primary internet connection, said CCIA, citing Pew Research Center as the source. “Excluding personal mobile electronic devices such as those identified in the complaint risks depriving American consumers of basic modern communication tools, even though those devices are not themselves alleged to contain any infringing functionality.”

The “foundation” of the patent system’s health is that “the rights of exclusion are limited to the invention claimed,” commented (login required) the Software & Information Industry Association. Sonos “has directly challenged this bedrock principle” by asking the ITC “to exclude noninfringing articles,” it said.

Sonos wrongly complains that the ITC judge erred by allowing redesigns that would enable Google to skirt the infringing activities found to violate Section 337, said SIIA. But “this is exactly the way the patent system is supposed to work and is in the public interest,” it said. Sonos cites “no case in which an exclusion order has been granted against a noninfringing, timely and properly presented redesign,” it said. SIIA President Jeff Joseph confirmed Google is a member.

Sonos is asking the ITC “to deprive the public of the benefits of competition based on infringement that it has not proven,” said SIIA. “In a case of this size and for these stakes, the swamp that Sonos wants to drain is more of a puddle.” The ability to design around patents “is a feature of software, not a bug,” said SIIA. “A valid patent and its specifications enable those skilled in the art of coding to read it and develop ways to bring a competing, and sometimes less expensive, noninfringing product to market.” Sonos didn’t comment.