Perplexity called the lawsuit a “baseless” reach for ownership of standard wake-word technology, which is used to recognize spoken activation phrases in devices like Amazon’s Echo.
(CN) — A Swiss startup accused Perplexity AI, the operator of an artificial intelligence-powered search engine, of stealing its trade secrets under the guise of developing a long-term business relationship.
SyteMLLabs, which does business under the name DaVoice, filed a heavily redacted complaint Thursday in San Francisco federal court.
DaVoice, the company says, has developed proprietary technology that allows a device to continuously listen for a specific word or phrase that activates it, with over 90% accuracy at below-market prices.
When the “wake” word is detected, the device wakes up and begins processing subsequent commands. A wake-word system, the company said, serves as a critical gatekeeper for the use of AI assistants, which require exceptional accuracy in recognizing the target word or phrase, a low rate of false wakes and an ability to conserve device energy.
DaVoice claims it entered into a series of confidential agreements with Perplexity last year to license its technology to the AI company, only for Perplexity to misappropriate DaVoice’s trade secrets, including proprietary source code, inference logic, network architecture, training approaches and training data, to build its wake-word system.
“Perplexity used the false and misleading promise of a potentially long-term and lucrative business partnership to lure DaVoice into executing the mutual confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement and master subscription agreement — the contracts subject to which DaVoice disclosed its trade secrets to Perplexity,” DaVoice said.
“It then breached those contracts by, among other things, using the technical expertise and know-how that DaVoice provided to Perplexity to accelerate Perplexity’s development of its own wake-word implementation.”
The Swiss company accuses Perplexity of stealing trade secrets under both federal and California law, breach of contract and fraudulent inducement, among other claims. DaVoice seeks compensatory damages for lost profits, reasonable royalty damages and exemplary damages for willful and malicious misappropriation of its trade secrets.
DaVoice is represented by attorneys from Susman Godfrey LLP.
“This is a baseless attempt to claim ownership of standard wake-word technology,” Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s chief communication officer, said in an email. “Recognizing a spoken activation phrase is not unique to DaVoice, and the agreement DaVoice signed expressly protects our right to develop our own ‘similar, equal or competitive products or services.’”
“That is exactly what we did, and we look forward to prevailing in court,” Dwyer added.
San Francisco-based Perplexity, which reportedly received funding from Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, is no stranger to litigation. The company has been sued by the New York Times over scraping and repackaging the newspaper’s articles, as well as Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones and New York Post and separately by Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster.
Last month, Perplexity prevailed before the Ninth Circuit, lifting a lower court order that had blocked its shopping assistant tool — which can compare products, prices and reviews on behalf of users — from accessing the Amazon website.
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