U.S. v. Chung
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
659 F.3d 815 (2011)
- Written by Meagan Messina, JD
Facts
Dongfan “Greg” Chung (defendant) was a former Boeing and Rockwell engineer. During Chung’s time at Boeing, federal agents started to suspect Chung of spying for China. In a search of Chung’s home and trash, federal agents discovered that Chung was throwing away Boeing technical documents hidden between pages of Chinese-language newspapers, along with over 300,000 pages of Boeing and Rockwell documents, in an unfinished storage area under Chung’s house. Agents also found correspondence, technical information, journals, and other documents. Chung claimed that he was using the information to write a book and that Chung’s supervisor at Boeing had permitted him to take the work documents home. The federal government alleged that six documents contained trade secrets about a phased-array antenna for the space shuttle and the Delta IV rocket. After a bench trial, Chung was convicted of conspiracy to commit economic espionage, economic espionage in violation of the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (EEA), acting as an unregistered former agent, and making a false statement to federal agents. The district court sentenced Chung to 188 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Chung appealed, arguing that his convictions were not supported by sufficient evidence.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Graber, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 832,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,500 briefs, keyed to 994 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
