Judge Overturns Economic Espionage Convictions Against Former Google Engineer
A federal judge has overturned seven economic espionage convictions against former Alphabet software engineer Linwei Ding. The ruling was made by U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, who stated that prosecutors failed to prove that Ding intended to benefit the Chinese government.
Ding was convicted of stealing trade secrets from Google, including details about hardware infrastructure and software platforms used to train large AI models. The stolen material included thousands of pages of confidential information.
The convictions for economic espionage were vacated, but Ding's seven convictions for stealing trade secrets remain intact. These charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine per count.