Sonos forcing Sound United to "brick" Heos products would be in the courts for years before anything actually happens... Plus Sonos has made the claim that D&M could have worked around the patent issues, meaning that Sound United still potentially can work around them with a SW update.
Worrying about what those potential changes will do the functionality of Heos units would be like worrying about what Sonos will do to do their products in the next remote update... oh wait, we already do that.
I'm Not an engineer, but I play one on TV. My handle is Tweety but I have nothing to do with the organization of similar name. I just had a really big head as a child so folks called me tweety bird.