summary
- Technology company Singular Computing has sued Google for stealing its patented AI technology, the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).
- Singular claims it used technology copied by Google as the basis for AI features in its services such as search and Gmail.
- Google claims that it developed the chipset independently and that Singular’s technology is fundamentally different and error-prone.
Google is no stranger to lawsuits, but it has added a new lawsuit to its long list. singular computingGoogle, a Massachusetts-based technology company, has filed a lawsuit in federal court, accusing the search giant of stealing some of its patented AI technology for tensor processing units (TPUs). The complaint alleges that Google incorporated patented technology into these AI-based processors after several meetings with Singular founder Joseph Bates. 2010 and 2014. Bates reportedly shared some of his ideas with his Google team during the course of these meetings.
Singular’s lawyer, Kelly Timbers, told jurors in a Boston courtroom that these copied technologies are used as the basis for AI features within Google services such as search, Gmail and translation. . Jurors were also shown an email written by Google’s current chief scientist, Jeff Dean, in which he talked about how Singular’s technology could be a “very good fit” with Google’s products (Reuters) (from correspondence).
Meanwhile, Google lawyer Robert Van Nest claimed that those involved in developing these chipsets had never met Singular’s founder, and said the team came up with the designs on their own. Furthermore, Van Nest says of Bates, “disappointed inventor“And Singular was already trying to approach AI-focused peers such as Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Singular’s technology uses approximate calculations, which makes it difficult to come up with ‘wrong’ calculations. There was a possibility, Van Nest said, adding that Google’s chipset “fundamentally different” is better than what is described in Singular’s patent.
Interestingly, Google’s pretrial documents state that Singular Computing has sought up to $7 billion in damages for the alleged infringement. But as Reuters points out, Singular’s lawyers had sought only $1.67 billion during the trial.
Google’s first TPU was announced in 2016, and the company has been using TPUs in its data centers since at least 2015. At the time, Google talked about how its first TPU was helping it deliver more relevant search results and improve Street View. , among others. Additional reporting from The Register highlights that Google’s TPU is now in its fifth generation and is used to train AI models on cloud infrastructure. The publication speculates that the trial could last at least several weeks.
According to the plaintiffs, the second and third versions of Google’s TPU, which debuted in 2017 and 2018, infringe Singular’s patents. Separately, Reuters reported that Google is fighting Singular Computing in the Washington Court of Appeals based on an appeal from the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office).
Another high-profile lawsuit against Google that’s still fresh in our minds is from Epic Games, where a jury ruled in favor of the game developer last month. Google subsequently appealed this decision. Shortly thereafter, the company announced a $700 million settlement in another antitrust lawsuit also related to the Play Store.
