Google Engineer Disputes AI Secrets in China Espionage Trial; Bloomberg Law, January 12, 2026

Isaiah Poritz, Bloomberg Law; Google Engineer Disputes AI Secrets in China Espionage Trial

"Former Google LLC engineer Linwei Ding on the first day of his criminal trial pushed back on allegations that he stole over 100 valuable AI trade secrets from the tech giant to start a business in China, arguing that the documents he copied don’t meet the legal definition of a trade secret."

Scraping or Stealing? A Legal Reckoning Over AI Looms; Hollywood Reporter, August 22, 2023

Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter ; Scraping or Stealing? A Legal Reckoning Over AI Looms

"Engineers build AI art generators by feeding AI systems, known as large language models, voluminous databases of images downloaded from the internet without licenses. The artists’ suit revolves around the argument that the practice of feeding these systems copyrighted works constitutes intellectual property theft. A finding of infringement in the case may upend how most AI systems are built in the absence of regulation placing guardrails around the industry. If the AI firms are found to have infringed on any copyrights, they may be forced to destroy datasets that have been trained on copyrighted works. They also face stiff penalties of up to $150,000 for each infringement.

AI companies maintain that their conduct is protected by fair use, which allows for the utilization of copyrighted works without permission as long as that use is transformative. The doctrine permits unlicensed use of copyrighted works under limited circumstances. The factors that determine whether a work qualifies include the purpose of the use, the degree of similarity, and the impact of the derivative work on the market for the original. Central to the artists’ case is winning the argument that the AI systems don’t create works of “transformative use,” defined as when the purpose of the copyrighted work is altered to create something with a new meaning or message."

AI Art Generators Spark Multiple Copyright Lawsuits; The Hollywood Reporter, January 17, 2023

 Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter; AI Art Generators Spark Multiple Copyright Lawsuits

"Whether AI programs, built on models that analyze the patterns of copyrighted works, violate the intellectual property rights of artists is up in the air. Engineers build AI art generators by feeding algorithms large databases of images downloaded from the internet without licenses. The artists’ suit asks whether the AI firms infringed on the copyrights of artists by using copyrighted works to train AI tools and when consumers used the art generators to create new works. It also asks whether the conduct is protected under fair use, which allows for use of protected works without permission as long as they are transformative."

Self-Driving to Federal Prison: The Trade Secret Theft Saga of Anthony Levandowski Continues; Lexology, August 13, 2020

Seyfarth Shaw LLP - Robert Milligan and Darren W. Dummit; Self-Driving to Federal Prison: The Trade Secret Theft Saga of Anthony Levandowski Continues

"Judge Aslup, while steadfastly respectful of Levandowski as a good person and as a brilliant man who the world would learn a lot listening to, nevertheless found prison time to be the best available deterrent to engineers and employees privy to trade secrets worth billions of dollars to competitors: “You’re giving the green light to every future engineer to steal trade secrets,” he told Levandowski’s attorneys. “Prison time is the answer to that.” To further underscore the importance of deterring similar behavior in the high stakes tech world, Judge Aslup required Levandowski to give the aforementioned public speeches describing how he went to prison."