Facebook Inc. is set to face trial next year over accusations from a U.K.-based data center firm that its Open Compute Project is built on stolen designs and methods for building modular data centers.

The accusations date back to March 2015, when BladeRoom Group Ltd., a company that specializes in building modular data centers from prefabricated parts, said Facebook not only stole its designs but also released them to the public through its Open Compute Project initiative.

Facebook’s efforts to have the case against it dismissed were rejected in February, and Friday proceedings moved forward when California district court judge Edward Davila set down a timeline for the forthcoming legal battle.

The Register reported that Judge Davila said both sides will be able to request documents and testimony through a discovery deadline of July 28. A pretrial conference will take place in August, before the jury selection process begins in earnest in March 2018. The trial itself is scheduled to run from April 3, 2018 to May 11, 2018.

BladeRoom’s original lawsuit filed in March 2015 claims that the company was “enticed” to meet with Facebook officials back in 2012 about a possible data center deal “under false pretenses.” Despite the meeting, no deal occurred, and the British company says Facebook instead took the opportunity to misappropriate its data center designs.

“BRG spent years developing and refining the prefabricated, modular design and the transportation and construction techniques that Facebook blithely passed off to the world in 2014,” the original lawsuit stated. The complaint then went on to allege that Facebook “simply stole the BRG methodology and passed it off as its own,” before using the designs to build its data center in Luleå, Sweden.

BladeRoom also alleges that Facebook took these designs and republished them under its Open Compute Project, which allows anyone to take the blueprints and use them free of charge to build their own data centers.

Image: Justin Strachan/Flickr.com