Two Chinese engineers have been sentenced to a year in prison for stealing computer chip designs from their Silicon Valley employers and trying to smuggle them to their homeland to launch a government-backed startup there.

Fei Ye, and Ming Zhong pleaded guilty in 2006, becoming the first people convicted of the most serious crime under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. They were accused of trying to benefit China with their stolen chip designs, though prosecutors did not allege that the Chinese government knew of their illegal activities.

Under the law they could have both been banged up for 30 years,  but prosecutors asked for less because the men cooperated with investigators. There have been only a handful of cases that have been filed under the Economic Espionage law, mostly because it's difficult to prove someone was trying to benefit a foreign nation.

Ye and Zhong were arrested at the San Francisco airport trying to board a flight to China. Their luggage was allegedly stuffed with sensitive documents on chip designs stolen from four tech companies they had worked for.

The paperwork also showed that the men were trying to solicit funding from Chinese government agencies to help get their startup going. The pair had worked for NEC, Sun, Transmeta and Trident Microsystems and papers from all those companies were included.