ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,547,371, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to Sonos Inc. (Santa Barbara, Calif.).
"Playback expansion" was invented by Benjamin Fullerton (Oakland, Calif.) and Ingve Holmung (Santa Barbara, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Examples described herein involve expanding playback of a media item from a first playback device to a second playback device. In one example, while a first playback device is playing a media item as part of a first zone, the first playback device identifies that a second playback device has moved to a location that is within a given physical proximity of the first playback. The first playback device determines that...