Ex-Google engineer’s conviction for stealing AI secrets partially overturned

A federal judge in San Francisco has reduced the conviction of former Google engineer Linwei Ding, who was initially found guilty of stealing AI trade secrets from the tech giant to benefit two Chinese companies. Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that there was not enough evidence to prove Ding intended or knew his actions would benefit the Chinese government, a requirement for the seven counts of economic espionage.

The judge acknowledged that evidence supported the guilty verdict on the theft of trade secrets. Ding, a Chinese national, was convicted earlier this year of stealing thousands of pages of confidential information from Google, including hardware infrastructure and software platform details that could provide an edge to rival cloud computing companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

The maximum penalty for each economic espionage charge is a 15-year prison term and a $5 million fine, while each trade secrets charge carries up to a 10-year term and a $250,000 fine. Ding is set to be sentenced on September 1. His legal team argued the Justice Department failed to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, and Ding's attorney expressed satisfaction with the ruling.

The Justice Department has not yet commented, and Google has not responded to a request for comment.