Federal Judge Overturns Seven Economic Espionage Counts Against Former Google Engineer Who Stole AI Secrets

US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco on Thursday threw out seven economic espionage counts against former Google engineer Linwei Ding, finding insufficient evidence he intended or knew his conduct would benefit the Chinese government, while upholding Ding's seven trade-secret theft convictions 1234. Prosecutors said Ding, who joined Google in 2019, copied thousands of pages of confidential information on the hardware infrastructure and software platforms behind Google's AI-training supercomputing data centers, including chip blueprints 2. Ding, a Chinese national convicted in January after an 11-day trial, faced up to 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine per espionage count, versus up to 10 years and $250,000 per trade-secret count; his lawyers sought acquittal three weeks after trial, and his attorney called the ruling gratifying 123. Sentencing is set for September 1, with the Justice Department and Google not immediately responding to requests for comment 12.