Kirkland & Ellis partner Michael De Vries, left, and O'Melveny partner Darin Snyder, right. Courtesy photos

A trade secret spat over the rules and data used to power artificially intelligent chat platforms kicked off Wednesday in Oakland federal court.

Publicly traded LivePerson Inc., which bills itself as "the world's first AI-powered conversational cloud," is seeking $16 million in lost profits plus punitive damages and attorneys fees from competing customer engagement provider [24]7.ai.