The US International Trade Commission has agreed with Sonos' claims that Google had infringed on its speaker and cast patents. It issued its initial decision back in August, and this finalizes its ruling, which prohibits Google from importing products found to have violated Sonos' intellectual properties. Since Google manufactures its products in China, that means it won't be able to gets them shipped to the US when the import ban takes effect in 60 days.

Sonos sued Google in 2020 over five patents, which include one that details a technology allowing wireless speakers to sync with one another. As The New York Times notes, the products affected include Google's Home smart speakers, Pixel phones and computers, as well as Chromecast devices. While Google is facing an import ban, a spokesperson said that the tech giant doesn't expect the ruling to interrupt its ability to import and sell devices. 

"While we disagree with today's decision, we appreciate that the International Trade Commission has approved our modified designs," the spokesperson told Protocol. "We will seek further review and continue to defend ourselves against Sonos' frivolous claims about our partnership and intellectual property." The commission didn't challenge those alternative designs in its final decision, which means Google can implement them. 

In fact, the Nest team has recently announced some changes to speaker groups, which it says is "due to a recent legal ruling." The most notable change is that, going forward, users will no longer be able to adjust the volume of all speakers in a group all at once. They'd have to adjust each speaker individually instead.

In a statement, Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus admitted that there's a possibility that "Google will be able to degrade or eliminate product features in a way that circumvents the importation ban that the ITC has imposed." However, he said the tech giant's products will still "infringe many dozens of Sonos patents" — that is, unless Google pays Sonos royalties for its technologies. 

His whole statement reads:

"We appreciate that the ITC has definitively validated the five Sonos patents at issue in this case and ruled unequivocally that Google infringes all five. That is an across the board win that is surpassingly rare in patent cases and underscores the strength of Sonos’s extensive patent portfolio and the hollowness of Google’s denials of copying. These Sonos patents cover Sonos' groundbreaking invention of extremely popular home audio features, including the set up for controlling home audio systems, the synchronization of multiple speakers, the independent volume control of different speakers, and the stereo pairing of speakers. 

There is a possibility that Google will be able to degrade or eliminate product features in a way that circumvents the importation ban that the ITC has imposed. But while Google may sacrifice consumer experience in an attempt to circumvent this importation ban, its products will still infringe many dozens of Sonos patents, its wrongdoing will persist, and the damages owed Sonos will continue to accrue. Alternatively, Google can —as other companies have already done — pay a fair royalty for the technologies it has misappropriated."

The surviving sister of Dave Patrick Underwood, a federal security guard who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2020, has filed a lawsuit against Meta, the parent organization of Facebook. The suit seeks to hold the company accountable for connecting the two men charged in the murder plot and giving them a space online to plan the attack.

Underwood was shot outside a federal building in Oakland, California in May of 2020. The two men charged inn the case were later linked to so-called “boogaloo” anti-government movement, which Facebook banned from its platform in June of 2020 citing the group's history of "actively promoting violence against civilians, law enforcement and government officials and institutions." 

“The shooting was not a random act of violence,” the lawsuit states. “It was the culmination of an extremist plot hatched and planned on Facebook by two men who Meta connected through Facebook’s groups infrastructure and its use of algorithms designed and intended to increase user engagement and, correspondingly, Meta’s profits.” The lawsuit alleges the two men would never have met if not for Facebook’s recommendations, which pushed them both to join groups that “openly advocated for violence.”

A spokesperson for Meta said in a statement to The New York Times that the “claims are without legal basis,” and pointed to the company’s work to ban “militarized social movements.”

The lawsuit is hardly the first time Meta has been implicated over its role in fueling extremism and violence. Facebook’s own researchers warned that group recommendations were pushing users toward extremism in 2016, according to internal company documents first reported by The Wall Street Journal. And documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen have raised questions about Facebook’s role in inciting violence around the world. Meta was also recently sued by a group of Rohingya refugees over Facebook's role in amplifying hate speech that incited a genocide in the country.

In a statement to ABC, Ted Leopold, who is representing Underwood’s sister, referenced Haugen’s disclosures about Facebook. “We believe and intend to show that Facebook’s conduct has led to a rise in extremism throughout the world and acts of real-world violence, including the murder of Officer Underwood,” Leopold said.

Since its debut in 2020, joining a conversation on Clubhouse has involved opening the app. But that’s no longer the case. Starting today, if you live in the US, you can listen to replays and live rooms with replays enabled using a web browser. What’s more, you don’t need to log in to use Clubhouse in this way.

Clubhouse notes the feature is experimental, so expect bugs. However, the company says it will roll out to more countries if people find it “useful.” Similarly, it will consider supporting more room types and other parts of the Clubhouse experience over time.

Separately, the company is updating its share sheet. When you’re in a guest room, you can tap the Share button, located at the bottom of the interface, to post a link to a session through Clubhouse, a social network or messaging app. When you pick the first option, you can add a comment to describe the room. If it’s a live room, your followers will get notification so that they can join.

Notably, both updates see Clubhouse making its app more widely accessible. When the app first launched, you had to obtain an invite to join. But as companies like Facebook and Twitter have moved to add live audio to their platforms, it has been forced to adapt in a bid to stay relevant.

It’s only been a few months since Twitter killed Fleets, but the company is already experimenting with a new video format. The company is testing a new “Tweet Take” feature that allows users to share reaction videos alongside a Quote Tweet.

With the test, Twitter users can opt to send a “Quote Tweet with reaction” instead of the typical retweet or Quote Tweet. These “Tweet Takes” as the company is calling them can be either a photo or a video, and the original tweet will be embedded as a card overtop.

The concept is similar to a feature in Twitter’s short-lived Fleets feature, which enabled users to share tweets with their own commentary in a full-screen format. Fleets, of course, never really gained traction and the company pulled the feature less than a month after its launch.

Unlike Fleets, these reaction videos will appear in the main timeline just like any other tweet, though the videos will look noticeably different than the typical retweet. (While users can record a reaction in full-screen, it’s not clear what format they appear in the timeline. We’ve reached out to Twitter for more info.)

But these “takes” are perhaps even more similar to TikTok-style reaction videos, which often feature a comment or another users’ clip as the source. While Twitter hasn’t necessarily encouraged these types of interaction in the past, the company has been taking steps to build more creator-friendly features so it’s not necessarily surprising to see this kind of experiment.

Of course, just as Twitter users raised concerns about whether Fleets could be used to target people for harassment, tailored reaction videos also feels like the kind of feature that could be ripe for abuse. Quote Tweets are already a major source of dunking and bullying — which Twitter has at times tried to discourage — so it’s not difficult to imagine that these “Tweet Takes” could also become problematic. It’s also not clear just how big the initial experiment will be — Twitter often previews new ideas and features in early stages, but not all make it past the testing phase.

One of the products Samsung showed off at its CES 2022 presentation was the Home Hub, an 8.4-inch tablet for controlling all the connected home devices in your household. The company has now shared more information about it. At launch, the Home Hub will have the ability to connect to every product in the SmartThings ecosystem, including Samsung appliances.

Samsung

In that way, it can tell you how much power your appliances use and if one needs cleaning. Home cooks will find a recipe hub for creating shopping lists and meal plans. Those are just some of the use cases Samsung outlines for the Home Hub. The company says the device’s AI software will anticipate what you need and put that information in front of you exactly when you need it.

Samsung has also pledged to support the upcoming Matter standard, which should open the door for the hub to connect to devices from other manufacturers. Based on the photos shared by Samsung, the Home Hub runs Android, suggesting it may also be possible to use it as a standard tablet. The device also comes with two speakers and two microphones, as well as the company’s Bixby assistant. The tablet will come with the charging dock you see pictured in the photos, and you’re free to take it out of that stand.

At first glance, it’s hard to see the appeal of the Home Hub. After all, it’s essentially a tablet that comes with the company’s SmartThings app preinstalled. You can download that same software on your phone. So it’s not like it’s offering something that isn’t already out there. However, framed another way, it’s a different approach to a smart display. Samsung hasn’t tried to create a device like the Echo Show 15 that wants to be the center of your home. The focus here is narrow, and that’s something that could appeal to people.

Samsung will release the Home Hub in Korea sometime in March, with global availability to follow later. No word yet on US pricing.

Follow all of the latest news from CES 2022 right here!

For the third straight year, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted E3. The event will once again be an online-only affair amid the Omicron surge.

“Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022,” the Entertainment Software Association told GamesBeat. “We are nonetheless excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”

The ESA canceled the 2020 edition of E3 shortly after the pandemic took hold in the US. A virtual version of the event took place last year.

Earlier this week, the Sundance Film Festival scuttled plans for a hybrid format as it moved the entire event online for the second year running. The Grammy Awards, which were also due to take place this month, have been postponed indefinitely. Although CES is taking place this week with an in-person component in Las Vegas, the CSA decided to end the show one day early.

AMC Networks has acquired anime distributor Sentai. Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but the purchase includes Sentai’s Hidive streaming service. It will join AMC’s stable of “targeted” streaming platforms, which already includes services like Shudder, IFC and SundanceTV. As part of the deal, AMC has also picked up Sentai Studios, the Anime Network and the company’s extensive catalog of anime titles. Some of the projects Sentai holds the license to include K-On! from Kyoto Animation and Haikyu!! from Production IG.

The acquisition comes less than a year since Sony completed a $1.175 billion deal to buy Crunchyroll from AT&T. At the time, the company said it would work quickly to create a unified anime subscription service that would feature content from both Funimation, which Sony has owned since 2017, and Crunchyroll. If nothing else, today's deal shows just how big of a business anime has become in the west. 

Snapchat creator Snap has sued the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for rejecting an application the company had filed to trademark the word “spectacles” in relation to its wearable of the same name. In a complaint spotted by The Verge, Snap claims its usage of the term “evokes an incongruity between an 18th-century term for corrective eyewear and Snap’s high-tech 21st-century smart glasses.”

The complaint stems from an ongoing disagreement between Snap and the USPTO over whether “spectacles” is a term that can be applied to any pair of smart glasses. In an opinion the agency’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board published in November, the USPTO said Snap’s use of Spectacles had failed to acquire the “distinctiveness” necessary for a trademark. “Spectacles is so commonly used to describe the nature of the product or competing products, rather than any particular source of the product(s),” the USPTO said at the time. In suing the USPTO, Snap hopes to overturn the appeal board’s decision.

Snap first filed for a Spectacles trademark in 2016, the same year it released the first-generation model. Despite a clever marketing campaign involving Minion-like vending machines, the wearable was a bust for the company. At one point, Snap reportedly had thousands of unsold pairs collecting dust in Chinese warehouses. However, even after losing $40 million on the first version, it went on to release two new models and recently debuted a pair of augmented reality Spectacles.

To that end, Snap claims, thanks to social media marketing, word of mouth and media coverage, consumers have come to associate the word “spectacles” with its brand, a claim the USPTO disputes. In the same November opinion, the agency wrote Spectacles’ “social media accounts have an underwhelming number of followers, and the number of followers is surprisingly small.”

Soon after GM formally revealed the Chevrolet Silverado EV at CES, it emerged that the $105,000 RST First Edition has already sold out. In fact, according to GM CEO Mary Barra, all of those vehicles were snapped up in just 12 minutes.

Barra told Bloomberg that the work truck variant is expected to be available in spring 2023, and GM plans to start delivering the RST First Edition that fall. The regular RST starts at $39,900, though that won't arrive until summer 2024.

It's not clear how many RST First Edition Silverados were available for pre-order, but the swift sell out isn't super surprising, given the popularity of the combustion engine Silverado. There's clearly a widespread appetite for electric pickups. Ford had to halt reservations of the F-150 Lightning due to overwhelming demand, and this week the automaker announced plans to double its production capacity to 150,000 vehicles per year.

LinkedIn has been working on a Clubhouse-style live audio room feature since at least last March. It's now set to roll that out this month as part of a new events platform.

The plan is to let organizers host virtual round tables, fireside chats and other kinds of discussions as they see fit, LinkedIn told TechCrunch. Hosts will be able to moderate discussions, while attendees will be able to speak with each other during events and afterward. Events will run on in-house tools that LinkedIn has built.

At the outset, LinkedIn is hoping members of its creator community (those who develop and share content on topics like career development) will host events. Around 1.5 million creators are already using LinkedIn's live video streaming feature, according to the company. Down the line, LinkedIn is aiming to get larger organizations involved in running events.

A video version of the feature will be available in the spring. Organizers ostensibly won't be able to charge for access for the time being, as LinkedIn doesn't currently have plans for ticketed events.

Clubhouse exploded in popularity when it debuted during the onset on the COVID-19 pandemic and people who were stuck at home were looking for ways to connect with each other remotely (the invite-only approach created an air of exclusivity too). Other major tech companies created their own versions of live audio rooms, including Facebook, Twitter and Discord. LinkedIn might be slightly late to the party, but its take on the format might prove a success in the long run, with many of its users eager to learn from those who are willing to share their knowledge, experience and insights.