DaVoice filed a federal lawsuit against Perplexity in California on 24 September, alleging the AI search company took trade secrets from work the two companies did together on wake-word technology. The complaint is heavily redacted, leaving the alleged use of specific code unclear. Perplexity called the lawsuit baseless and said its agreement protects its right to build competing technology. A wake word activates an assistant when a device hears a chosen phrase.
Artificial Intelligence··Evening
DaVoice files a trade-secret suit
DaVoice, a startup developing voice-activation technology, sued AI search company Perplexity in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on 24 September. The company alleges Perplexity took trade secrets after the two worked together on wake-word technology. A wake word is the short phrase a device listens for before activating an assistant, without sending every sound to a cloud service. Reuters reported the filing and Bloomberg Law independently described the same lawsuit from its heavily redacted complaint. Filing a complaint starts the civil case; it does not establish that Perplexity used DaVoice’s technology.[1], [2]
The complaint names several kinds of technical material
The complaint says the collaboration used DaVoice source code, inference logic, network architecture, training approaches and training data. DaVoice alleges that Perplexity then took confidential information from that work. Much of the document is blacked out, so the public account does not identify a particular Perplexity product or disclose the code that might be compared. Bloomberg Law described the alleged relationship as a promised long-term partnership. Those are the plaintiff’s claims, and the courts have not made a finding on whether any trade secret was misused.[1]
Perplexity disputes the allegation
Perplexity communications chief Jesse Dwyer called the suit baseless on 25 September. He said the companies’ agreement expressly protects Perplexity’s right to develop similar or competing products. DaVoice’s complaint and Perplexity’s response therefore differ on whether the later work used protected information; the public redactions leave the precise technical overlap unclear. Reuters reported that Perplexity had not yet filed a formal answer to the complaint. The next stage will turn on the lawsuit’s evidence and proceedings, rather than on the accusation or denial alone.[1]
