Legal News

Jury finds "no smoking gun" in economic espionage case

By Richard Binder

Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge were charged in 2006 with trade secret theft. Federal prosecutors then bumped up the indictment to include economic espionage, saying the defendants tried to commercialize stolen computer chip data with venture funding from the Chinese government.

But on Friday, the government came up empty as a federal jury acquitted the two Silicon Valley engineers on a pair of counts and deadlocked on three others. The jurors who sided with the defendants felt the government relied too much on witnesses from NetLogic Microsystems Inc., the company in question. The jurors also found the government had no "smoking gun" that the defendants were working for the Chinese government.

The jury deliberated for five days. On both a conspiracy count and an economic espionage count, the jury hung 9-3 in favor of acquittal. On another trade secret count, they divided 6-6.

Full details here.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on November 23, 2009 (boomark / email).