Google warned not to invade jurors’ privacy in AI tech case
Judge says tech giant has “access to vast quantities of data” that could lead to an “unwarranted invasion” of privacy | Google must not access proprietary data on potential jurors | Company dismisses plaintiff’s founder as a “disappointed inventor”.
Google has been ordered to take steps to safeguard potential jurors’ privacy ahead of a patent infringement trial that could see the tech giant liable for billions in damages in a dispute over artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
US District Chief Judge Dennis Saylor of the district of Massachusetts told Google on January 8 that it must refrain from accessing “a vast quantity of users’ personal data” during the jury selection process in Singular Computing v Google.
Boston-based hardware and software developer Singular Computing sued Google in December 2019, alleging that the use of certain computer system architectures infringed its patents, US numbers 8,407,273 and 9,218,156 and 10,416,961, which each describe a method of “processing with compact arithmetic processing elements”.
Specifically, the suit claims that Google’s TPUv2 and TPUv3 chips infringe Singular’s Tensor Processing Units accelerators, which are used for the training of large AI models applied in chatbots, code generation, content generation, and synthetic speech.
Google argued that Singular had initially requested up to $7 billion in monetary damages for the alleged infringement of its patents. However, at trial, Singular’s counsel said Google should pay $1.67 billion.
Singular also filed a motion to preclude the use of potential jurors’ private information during the voir dire process—a preliminary examination of a witness or the jury pool by a judge or counsel.
Potential for ‘unwarranted invasion’
On Monday, Saylor agreed with Singular that “Google has access to a vast quantity of its users’ personal data”, and that “it is almost certain that many, if not all, members of the venire are current users of Google’s products and services”.
“Google’s counsel has stated unequivocally that it will not use its users’ data for litigation advantage, nonetheless the potential for unwarranted (and asymmetrical) invasion of jurors’ privacy is sufficiently substantial that an order prohibiting such conduct is warranted,” Saylor wrote.
On that basis, he determined that Google may not access any proprietary data it may possess about any member of the venire or member of the empanelled jury at any time during the empanellment process.
Additionally, Singular requested that the parties be prohibited from using social media and other publicly available information to research venire members or empanelled jurors.
However, Saylor found that this particular concern was “more limited” because “once a jury has been empanelled and sworn…both parties at that point will have a relatively equal opportunity to conduct reasonable research into the limited number of empanelled jurors”.
A ‘disappointed inventor’
He proceeded to order that while parties should not investigate publicly available information, including social media histories, of venire members, they may conduct reasonable inquiries of publicly available sources to “ascertain basic background information concerning the sworn jurors” once the jury is empanelled.
Google’s counsel may use its search engine as part of that process, he added, but only to the same extent that any member of the public could do so.
“The parties may not, however, use such information to contact jurors, directly or indirectly, or to harass or attempt to influence them in any way,” concluded Saylor.
Google has rejected Singular’s claims of infringement, denying that its chip designers had ever met the plaintiff’s founder Joseph Bates, and had used these meetings to steal his ideas.
During court hearings, the tech giant’s counsel dismissed Bates as “a disappointed inventor” who had “failed repeatedly” to convince several companies including Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Amazon and ChatGPT-creator OpenAI to invest in or use his inventions.
Singular is represented by Adam Doherty and Brian Seeve, both partners of Prince Lobel Tye and Kerry Timbers, managing partner at Sunstein Law.
Google is represented by Robert Van Nest and Rachael Meny, both partners at Keker, Van Nest & Peters in San Francisco, and Nathan Speed, a shareholder at Wolf Greenfield in Boston.
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