But implementing that would probably violate Microsoft patent on 'Extensibility for context-aware digital personal assistant' or one of the millions of other patents. It is better to not make that feature at all I guess.
I am not sure how anything gets made, unless you ignore patents, and then see if you get sued. No way the typical start-up is cognizant of the millions of patents they could potentially be violating. It would be impossible to even try to keep that in your head when being creative.
https://www.engadget.com/sonos-google-itc-compliant-initial-...
Looks like the primary, initial complaint was around the tuning feature for the speakers. There is a link to subsequent complaints.
If you have a Sonos, when you first set up a speaker you use wave your mobile around while the speaker emits a tone and your phone mic sends it feedback on how to optimize the sound.
Right now, Sonos's Google Home/Assistant integration feels half-baked, and playing music is a much better experience on iOS due to the AirPlay 2 integration.
Yes, TechCrunch is garbage.
Their business model is not to release brand new products each year, but to release improvements through software to existing hardware. One of those software features was TruePlay which existing users of Sonos were able to have free of charge. This was part of the patent that Google was copying.
I hear a lot of people complaining when large companies such as Google or Apple gobble up smaller companies or use their market power to drown out competitors. This is one of those scenarios, but through blatant patent copying.
I am always in favour of large companies being caught copying technology developed by smaller players in the market, which clearly produce quality products. Also, of course those part of the legal investigation know what the patent is.
I think you must have blinked. For a couple decades.
Nobody is gonna send you a c&d for personal use
Practically, no. Theoretically they could. I believe there's no "personal use" exemption on patents under most law systems (there was one in UK maybe?).
10,209,953: Playback device https://patents.google.com/patent/US10209953B2/en
9,219,959: Multi-channel pairing in a media system https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219959B2/en
8,588,949: Method and apparatus for adjusting volume levels in a multi-zone system https://patents.google.com/patent/US8588949B2/en
10,439,896: Playback device connection https://patents.google.com/patent/US10439896B2/en
Generally, these are about two or more output devices (speakers?) coordinating with each other. There might be dependent claims about waving your phone around, but I didn't read that far.
Pro tip #2: the priority date(s). These seem to be 2003, 2004, and 2006. Those were all well within the internet era. So if you think "everyone was doing that!" you have to prove it with prior art before those dates. You can be certain the tech advisors in Patent Litigation have been trying to do that.
9,195,258 - System and method for synchronizing operations among a plurality of independently clocked digital data processing devices
9,219,959 - Multi-channel pairing in a media system
10,209,953 - Playback device
10,439,896 - Playback device connection
