Ding is scheduled to appear at a status conference on February 3.

Prosecutors said Ding began copying sensitive internal Google documents in 2022, transferring over 1,000 files (about 14,000 pages) to his personal cloud storage and hiding the activity to evade security systems, with 105 documents central to the case.

The excerpt includes promotional content from MLex about regulatory risk coverage and services, which is not central to the verdict but provides context on MLex’s offerings.

A former Google software engineer, Linwei Ding, was convicted by a federal jury in San Francisco on charges of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets related to stealing AI-related information from Google for two Chinese companies.

The trial spanned two-and-a-half weeks in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, with sentencing pending and the judge noting Ding was not a flight risk.

Ding, who joined Google in 2019, shifted into thefts around 2021 amid interest from a Chinese technology company seeking his services.

U.S. Attorney and FBI officials framed the conviction as defending national security and the nation’s technological edge, highlighting potential harm to economic competitiveness.

The verdict was unanimous and delivered after less than three hours of deliberation following a 10-day trial.

The conviction represents a significant legal outcome in a high-profile tech-industry intellectual property case.

Google was not charged and cooperated with law enforcement; the company did not provide an immediate comment.

Details about the specific trade secrets, the evidence, and sentencing were not provided in the excerpt, leaving the outcome as the focal point.

A 12-person jury in San Francisco returned the guilty verdict on Thursday.