A judge acquits Linwei Ding, an ex-Google engineer, in a case involving alleged theft of AI-related trade secrets, according to reporting on the outcome. The development follows an earlier jury verdict in which Ding was found guilty on multiple counts after a two-week trial in January.
In January, a jury found Ding guilty of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. The allegations center on Ding, described as a Chinese national, allegedly taking or accessing thousands of pages of confidential information tied to AI. One outlet reports that the judge’s ruling fully acquits him, while another characterizes the result as a partial overturning of the conviction, suggesting the court revisits at least some of the counts or findings from the jury. Both accounts agree on the existence of the earlier guilty verdict and the underlying claim of misappropriating confidential AI materials, but they differ in how they describe the extent of the judge’s final decision.
The case concerns economic espionage and trade-secret laws and the handling of jury findings by the court after the January trial.
