Judge throws out espionage counts against former Google engineer
A federal judge, Vince Chhabria, threw out seven economic espionage convictions against former Google engineer Linwei Ding on the ground that prosecutors did not prove his conduct was intended to benefit the Chinese government, while upholding seven trade secret theft convictions. A jury had convicted Ding on all 14 counts after prosecutors said he removed thousands of pages of confidential material on Google’s AI infrastructure, including hardware blueprints and the tensor processing unit stack. Sentencing is set for 1 September, and prosecutors may seek appeal, but the ruling narrows the government's national security argument in AI theft cases.
Seven economic espionage convictions were vacated for lack of state connection
Context
A jury convicted the defendant on 14 counts after an 11-day trial. The judge found theft proved but not intent to benefit a foreign state. The case may go to appeal and sentencing will occur on 1 September.
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