Google on Tuesday will go on trial in a federal court in Boston due to allegations that the processors it uses to power some of its artificial intelligence technologies infringe a computer scientist’s patents.
Massachusetts-based Singular Computing claims that its founder Joseph Bates’ technology was copied by Google so the tech giant can use it to support AI features in Google Search, Gmail, Google Translate, and more, reports Reuters. According to a court filing, Singular is looking to win up to $7 billion in monetary damages. This could double the largest-ever patent infringement award in US history if it goes through.
Singular filed the complaint in 2019 in which it said that Bates shared his innovations with Google between 2010 and 2014. The company says Google’s Tensor Processing Units copy his technology and infringe on two patents. According to the lawsuit, Google’s circuits used an improved architecture that Bates developed, which allows for greater processing power.
The search engine giant told the court in December that its processor works differently from Singular’s patented technologies and that the case is invalid. Google introduced the processing units in question in 2016 to power AI for speech recognition, content generation, ad recommendations, and other features. According to Singular, versions two and three of the units, which were introduced between 2017 and 2018, violate its patent rights.
