Google and Sonos can’t find common ground in the claim-constructions phase of the International Trade Commission investigation into allegations Google devices infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents, said a Sonos brief (login required) posted Monday in docket 337-TA-1191. Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock should reject Google’s proposed constructions as “legally improper,” said Sonos. ITC staff agrees with Sonos “for the most part,” it said. Google also claims to have staff backing (see 2007060005). Google began infringing Sonos’ patents when it launched its first wireless multiroom audio product, Chromecast Audio, in 2015, said Sonos. “Google’s misappropriation of Sonos’s patented technology has only proliferated, as Google has expanded its wireless multi-room audio system to more than a dozen different infringing products.” Google denies the allegations and last month countersued Sonos on patent infringement allegations.

Voxx bought a majority of Directed’s automotive aftermarket business for $11 million cash. In a transaction completed Thursday, Voxx bought the aftermarket vehicle remote start and security systems and connected car solutions businesses of Directed and Directed Electronics Canada, Voxx said Monday. The buyer expects to complete an agreement with Nutek, which, in exchange for a 25% stake in the new company, will assume about $4.2 million in trade payables and claims and obligations in Canada for employee retention and real estate leases. The transaction is expected to add $50 million in sales annually, “provided there is no further deterioration in the economy due to the global pandemic,” Voxx said. The brands include Viper, Clifford and Python. Noting the years-long competition between the companies, Voxx CEO Pat Lavelle called the purchase a “natural fit."

The global Bluetooth headphone market is projected to grow at a 12.3% compound annual growth rate, to $17.5 billion, through 2025, said Million Insights Friday. It cited 3D sound, on-board storage, gesture recognition, noise cancellation and digital hearing aid features as drivers. North America is expected to have the highest growth, 12.9%.

Four Utah stations went live with ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, Sinclair announced Wednesday. Sinclair owns KUTV Salt Lake City and KJZZ-TV Salt Lake City; Nexstar owns KTVX Salt Lake City and KUCW Ogden. The stations join other recent 3.0 ones in Las Vegas, Pittsburgh and Nashville.

Samsung released its next-generation series of solid-state storage drives with capacity up to 8 TB. Read speed is 560 MB per second and write speed 530 MB per second, it said.

AT&T 5G is now live in 355 markets, including 28 announced Monday. Dallas, Salt Lake City, Miami, Orlando and Hawaii's Maui County are among the latest.

Ossia is collaborating with Japanese electrical products company Marubun for its Cota wireless over-the-air power technology, it said Wednesday. Devices can be activated, managed and monitored via the Cota Cloud platform, it said, and its receivers embedded into IoT devices, wearables and other electronics across industrial, automotive and consumer applications. Marubun will be a sales arm for Ossia in Japan, a market “aggressively pursuing” technology innovation such as wireless power, said Ossia. Energous has gotten regulatory approval for its charging technology (see 2002280015).

BlackBerry CEO John Chen acknowledges it was “a rough year for our share price and our equity value,” but he and the board are “extremely bullish about our going-forward plan,” he told the company’s annual shareholder meeting virtually Tuesday. The ambition is to become the “must-have software provider for endpoints,” said Chen. BlackBerry sees a $38 billion market opportunity in helping “people that build devices” for the smart home or smart city, he said. The compound annual growth rate of the software business has been about 20% the past four years, said Chen. “We're pretty pleased with that number,” but “we're working very hard to make it higher than that,” he said. The “technology lab” was created about a year ago, he said. “We’ve done a lot of good stuff,” including the automotive cybersecurity tech it demonstrated at CES to “predict certain fault conditions in the car,” he said. Shares closed 3.5% lower Wednesday at $4.92.

Vizio added the Movies Anywhere app to its SmartCast smart TV platform, it said Tuesday. Users can access movies purchased across platforms and digital retailer accounts through the app, it said. Participating studios are Sony, Universal (including DreamWorks and Illumination Entertainment), Disney (including Disney, Pixar, Twentieth Century Studios, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm), and Warner Bros. Consumers can sync movie collections across Apple TV, Prime Video, Vudu/Walmart, Xfinity, Google Play/YouTube, Microsoft Movies & TV, FandangoNOW and Verizon Fios TV.

Global OLED panel revenue will increase 14% in 2020 to $31.8 billion, and will grow to $51.2 billion by 2025, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. It expects smartphones to “continue to dominate the revenue picture” for OLED panels, but its share will “slowly erode as other applications pick up,” it said. Smartphones were 81% of OLED panel revenue in 2019, “but we expect that share to decline to 67% in 2025,” it said. TV panel revenue will increase steadily, “as we expect innovation to push OLED TV to continued success in the premium TV space,” said DSCC.