A 2019 patent infringement lawsuit filed against Google by computer scientist Dr. Joseph Bates has finally made its way to court.

Bates, who founded technology licensing and development company Singular Computing in 2005, claims that on three separate occasions between 2010 and 2014 he shared his computer processing innovations with Google while discussing how to solve challenges related to AI.

Instead of licensing his design, Bates’ lawsuit argues that Google copied his computer architecture design for the creation of its Tensor Processing Units (TPU) v2 and v3 processors.

TPUs are specialized hardware accelerators designed by Google specifically for accelerating machine learning workloads.

These chips have been used by Google to support AI features in a number of Google services, including Google Search, Gmail, and Google Translate.

In an internal email cited in the case, Google chief scientist Jeff Dean wrote that Bates' ideas could be “really well suited” for what Google was developing. An additional email from an unnamed Google employee said that staffers were “quite corrupted by Joe's ideas.”

For this alleged infringement, Bates is requesting a $1.67 billion payout from Google.

“Singular’s patent claims are dubious and currently on appeal,” said a Google spokesperson, referencing a separate case currently being argued by Google in a Washington appeals court where the company is seeking to have Singular’s patents invalidated.

“[The patent claims] 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,” the spokesperson said.

The trial is expected to last two weeks.