Google and Sonos are fighting over who owns the rights to multi-room audio, and customers are frequently caught in the crossfire. Last month, Googletook away the ability to add Nest devices to multiple speaker groups at oncedue to Sonos' patent lawsuit. This was a major bummer for Nest users, but there’s good news: On October 6, a federal judge ruled in Google’s favor, invalidating Sonos' patent claims.

The search giant scored a touchdown against Sonos in court after US District Judge William Alsup overturned a recent $32.5 million jury verdict against the company. This means Google is nowundoing the limitationsit previously implemented on multiplesmart home devices, including Nest speakers, displays, and Chromecast. Anish Kattukaran, Google’s product director for Home and Nest, announced in an X (Twitter) post that Google Home users will once again be able to add Nest devices to multiple speaker groups at once.

If you previously encountered an error when attempting to add a device to another group, this will no longer be the case going forward.This update is currently being rolled out to affected devices and theGoogle Homeapp on Android, with the iOS version following suit shortly.

Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel, called Sonos' lawsuit “spurious” in ablog postand chastised “aggressive actors” who abuse the patent system. She also cited the federal judge’s ruling that rejected two of Sonos' patents as invalid and unenforceable. The court has ruled that Sonos tried to game the patent system by connecting its latest multi-speaker patents to older provisional applications.

An excerpt from thecourt’s decisionreads: “This was not a case of an inventor leading the industry to something new. This was a case of the industry leading with something new and, only then, an inventor coming out of the woodwork to say that he had come up with the idea first — wringing fresh claims to read on a competitor’s products from an ancient application.”

The court determined that in 2014, Google offered to collaborate with Sonos on a plan for a product that would implement the claimed invention. A year later, the company introduced its own products that used the invention without Sonos' participation. In 2019, Sonos filed the applications and presented the claims before actually bringing the invention to its own product line in 2020.

“Judge Alsup’s ruling invalidating the jury’s verdict is wrong on both the facts and law, and Sonos will appeal,” a Sonos spokesperson told TechCrunch. “The same is true of earlier rulings narrowing our case.”

Google and Sonos have been constantly locked in a legal battle that’s leaving customers feeling like collateral damage. In January of last year, itremoved the speaker group volume control functionalityin response to a decision by the US International Trade Commission in favor of Sonos. This forced users to manually adjust the volume of its connected speakers.

Despite Google’s latest win, it is important to note that the legal battle between the two companies is not over yet, and with Sonos moving to appeal the judge’s ruling, it is possible that the case could go to trial again. In the meantime, you may breathe a sigh of relief knowing that you will soon be able to enjoy a key feature of your Nest devices.