Jury finds ex-Google engineer guilty of stealing AI trade secrets for Chinese companies

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Former Google software engineer Linwei Ding stole proprietary information on Google’s artificial intelligence technology and secretly transferred it to tech companies in China, a 12-person jury found Thursday.

Ding was accused of stealing trade secrets from Google, which hired him in 2019 as a software engineer to help develop its supercomputing data centers. He was charged with seven counts of theft of trade secrets and seven counts of economic espionage, each corresponding to one of the seven categories of trade secrets.

The jurors found Ding guilty of all 14 counts of theft of trade secrets and economic espionage. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines for each trade secret count, in addition to 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine for each economic espionage count.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, a Barack Obama appointee, ruled that Ding be released pending sentencing, finding he was not a danger to the public or a flight risk.

Attorney Grant Fondo of Goodwin Procter, an attorney for Ding, told Courthouse News after the verdict that “we respect the jury’s verdict, but we are obviously disappointed.”

United States Attorney Craig H. Missakian said in an email statement that the jury “delivered a clear message today that the theft of this valuable technology will not go unpunished.”

“We will vigorously protect American intellectual capital from foreign interests that seek to gain an unfair competitive advantage while putting our national security at risk,” he said.

The federal government claims Ding began transferring files in May 2022, copying information from internal Google documents to the notes application on his company-issued laptop, converting the notes to PDFs and uploading them to a personal cloud account.

In total, they say Ding transferred 1,255 documents, comprising an estimated 14,000 pages, between May 2022 and May 2023. The case focuses on 105 documents that the government says contain Google trade secrets related to the company’s supercomputing data centers.

The government also claims Ding worked for two China-based technology companies during his tenure at Google, taking on the role of chief technology officer for the Beijing-based company Rongshu in November 2022, and founding his own technology company, Zhisuan Technology, the following spring.

In closing arguments, Fondo told the jury there was no evidence Ding transferred, sold or used trade secrets to build a product, and questioned the value of the documents.

“Ask yourself, if Linwei had these trade secrets with the intent to use them, and they were out fundraising with investors and none of the investors invested in them, if these trade secrets were so incredibly valuable, it tells you he never used them, never transferred them,” Fondo said.

Fondo also argued that the documents could not have contained trade secrets because Google did not do enough to protect the information, including inconsistent labeling and sharing documents widely with hundreds of thousands of employees.

“Google chose openness over security," he said. “They did not take reasonable measures.”

In contrast, Department of Justice attorney Casey Boome said the government did not need to prove that Ding actually used or transferred the trade secrets to anyone, but rather, just that he intended to do so.

“Why did Mr. Fondo spend so much time talking about things that don’t matter? If he talked about the question that matters, what the defendant intended to do, there is no way to find a way around guilty on every single count,” he said, adding that it made sense that Ding did not sell or transfer the documents because they made him valuable.

Department of Justice attorney Molly Priedeman told the jury that Ding used the purported trade secret information to give himself a leg up when applying for jobs in China, as well as advancing the Chinese companies he became affiliated with. He lied to investors about his experience and role at Google as well as what his own technology company could achieve, she claimed.

“Why did the defendant feel so confident saying this if it was not true? At this point, he was already stealing Google trade secret information,” Priedeman said. “After getting rejections using a resume with his real experience, he chose a different strategy. Lie about his experience, and he had trade secrets to deliver on promises.”

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