The U.S. Attorney’s office in Charlottesville, Virginia, has dropped criminal charges against a visiting Chinese scientist at the University of Virginia who was accused of stealing proprietary software code from his professor, according to the Wall Street Journal. A federal prosecutor ruled that “some portion” of the trade secrets found on Hu Haizhou’s computer were “in a shared space” to which Hu “had authorized access.” A spokesperson for the University of Virginia said Hu, who was researching underwater robotics, “did not have permission to access or take the files and was repeatedly denied permission to access them,” but added that one of the computer systems Hu was was authorized to use had “permission settings that were not sufficient to establish a violation of law.”

Hu’s lawyer, James D. Tunick, said that, “Every file that was on Haizhou’s computer he was authorized to possess, as he used his login credentials provided by the University of Virginia.” He said that his client “absolutely feels betrayed."