Google Faces $7 Billion Patent Infringement Case On Copying Technology To Power AI Features

Google is poised to appear before a federal jury in Boston on charges of patent infringement in a case filed by Singular Computing founder Joseph Bates, who accused Google of copying his technology to power AI features in prominent products such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google Translate and sought up to $7 billion in monetary damage from Google, making it the largest-ever patent infringement award in US history.

Dismissing Singular’s patents as “dubious” Google’s spokesperson, Jose Castaneda, asserted that Google developed its processors independently over many years and function differently from Singular’s patented technology, with the confidence of setting the record straight during the trial, which is expected to last two to three weeks.

However, Bates claims that he shared his computer-processing innovations with Google between 2010 and 2014, and Google’s Tensor Processing Units, crucial for enhancing AI capabilities, copied Bates’ technology, infringing two patents indicating that Google introduced its processing units in 2016 for applications like speech recognition, content generation, and ad recommendation.

The lawsuit also described an improved circuit architecture discovered by Bates, which revolutionized the AI training and inference methods. The filing mentioned Google’s rejection of Bates’ technology, stating that the company explicitly communicated that the idea was not suitable for its applications.