By Howard Mintz
San Jose Mercury News

Lee, 44, and Ge, 36, are among just a handful of defendants to face federal charges under a section of the 13-year-old Economic Espionage Act, designed to prevent the illegal transfer of technology to foreign governments. While a number of defendants have pleaded guilty and been sentenced, only one other has gone to trial -- a former Boeing Co. and Rockwell International engineer convicted this summer in Santa Ana federal court for passing critical information on the space program to China.

For Silicon Valley, where companies have worried for years about their prized secrets being leaked to China and other countries, such a trial is a window into the complexities of protecting product information in a place with ties to every corner of the global economy.