Google has indebted Sonos patents, said an International Trade Commission (ITC) judge, but this preliminary conclusion must be studied by other judges who will confirm it or not.

Sonos filed a complaint against Google in January 2020, saying that its competitor/partner had drawn from just over 150 of its patents.

Five of them - the maximum authorized in a complaint before the ITC - served as a framework for this approach.They relate to how to group several speakers and synchronize their reading;to control the noise level of a single speaker or a group or to create a stereo pair.Which of these patents has been violated?This clarification has not yet been provided.

Google had defended itself from any borrowing from Sonos technologies and had contradicted by its own complaints.Last May, a German court had already issued an injunction favorable to Sonos in the same litigation but Google had appealed.

By complaining before the ITC, which has a judicial power, Sonos potentially threatens Google of an import ban in the United States of its products manufactured in China: Chromecast, Pixel, Pregnant ...

This first decision must however be analyzed by a group of ITC judges.It will not be done before December 13 and an import ban would not apply before 60 days, recalls the New York Times.Which puts sales of Google products under the end of the year.

Google is not the only one targeted by Sonos.The Californian manufacturer had accused Amazon of identical practices, but he had added that he did not have financial kidneys strong enough to attack these two behemoths simultaneously.