A rare economic espionage case ended badly for the government Friday, as a federal jury acquitted two Silicon Valley engineers on a pair of counts and deadlocked on three others.

Jurors who sided with Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge felt the government relied too heavily on evidence supplied by NetLogic Microsystems Inc., the alleged victim. To prove that information found on defendants’ computers was, in fact, a trade secret, prosecutors called only witnesses from the company itself.