A federal judge overturned seven economic espionage convictions against former Google software engineer Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, while upholding seven convictions for stealing trade secrets. U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that prosecutors had not shown Ding knew or intended that his actions would benefit the Chinese government, a required element of the espionage charges. The trade-secret convictions concern thousands of pages of confidential Google information about hardware and software used in the company’s AI data centers and to train large AI models. Ding was convicted on all 14 counts in January after an 11-day trial and is scheduled to be sentenced on September 1. The overturned espionage counts carried maximum penalties of 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine each, while the remaining trade-secret counts carry up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine per count. Alphabet Class A shares closed at $340.67, down 1.17%, and Class C shares at $338.20, down 1.02%, on Thursday.