Linwei Ding: Ex-Google engineer's espionage convictions partially overturned

A U.S. federal judge has partially overturned the conviction of Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer found guilty of stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that while there was sufficient evidence to support the guilty verdict for the theft of trade secrets, there was insufficient evidence to prove Ding intended or knew his actions would benefit the Chinese government. This ruling vacates seven counts of economic espionage, which carried a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison per charge.

However, the seven counts of theft of trade secrets remain standing. Ding, a Chinese national, was convicted in January following an 11-day trial for stealing thousands of pages of confidential information related to Google’s AI infrastructure, including hardware blueprints and software platforms used to train large AI models.

Ding is scheduled to be sentenced on September 1. The legal distinction between the charges is significant, as economic espionage requires proof of a connection to a foreign state, whereas trade secret theft does not.