A patent dispute launched four years ago by a little-known local firm went to trial in Boston this week. And it could turn into a massive headache for internet search giant Google.
The patent suit, originally filed by Cambridge-based Singular Computing in late 2019, claims that Google has violated several of Singular’s patents related to a new kind of microprocessor that’s better than traditional microchips at running artificial intelligence systems. Singular is seeking $1.67 billion in damages.
Even before the recent boom in generative AI systems like ChatGPT, Google added AI-related capabilities to many of its services like Google Search, Gmail, and Google Translate. For instance, when typing a message in Gmail, the service will often display an AI-generated prediction of what the user will type next. These capabilities are made possible by custom processor chips optimized for AI systems. In 2015, Google began using these chips, called Tensor Processing Units.
The suit does not allege Google’s first versions of these chips violated Singular’s patents, but it claims that later versions were based on concepts that Singular Computing founder Joseph Bates disclosed to Google representatives in a series of meetings that occurred between 2010 and 2017. According to the lawsuit, Bates informed Google at the time that his innovations were patent-protected. Nevertheless, the suit alleges “Google copied and adopted Dr. Bates’ patented invention,” incorporating the technology into improved versions of the Tensor Processing Units.
The current trial involves two of Singular’s patents, but the company has filed additional lawsuits against Google claiming the company has violated six others, for a total of eight patents.
Singular’s founder Bates was admitted to Johns Hopkins University in the late 1960s, when he was 13 years old, as part of a research program to track the performance of students with exceptional math skills, according to a report in Nature magazine. (Other participants in the Johns Hopkins program would include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and singer and actress Lady Gaga.)
Bates graduated from Johns Hopkins at age 17, then earned a doctorate in computer science from Cornell University. He’s served as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, according to his LinkedIn profile. Singular, founded in 2005, was funded in part by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Singular Computing declined to comment about the case. But Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda described Singular’s patent claims as “dubious” and said the company was challenging the validity of the patents in a proceeding at the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Castaneda added that even if the patents are valid, “they don’t apply to our Tensor Processing Units, which we developed independently over many years. We look forward to setting the record straight in court.”
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeTechLab.