A&A: Water agency contractors’ calculations “trade secret”?

Q: A county water agency has hired a consultant for a major capital project and has released the feasibility study done by the consultant but has not responded for a request to review the consulting contract itself. This isn’t academic: the agency asserts that the consultants’ excel spread sheet originals containing the actual cell-by-cell math [...]

Federal appeals court rules records in Apple case open to public

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that  court documents in case brought by Apple against a maker of Mac computer clones were public. Apple claimed that the documents contained “compelling trade secrets”  about the Mac OS X operating system. -db From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, January 6, 2012, by [...]

FAC wins case against CalPERS for records on disastrous real estate investment

The Superior Court in San Francisco ruled Tuesday in FAC’s favor against CalPERS regarding access to records on their PageMill real estate investment. According to the ruling (FAC v CalPERS Order), the Court agreed with FAC that Govt Code section 6254.26, the exemption for certain information related to “alternative investments,”  does NOT apply to real [...]

Defense Department fails to make case for revealing contractors’ quality control information

A federal court sided with defense contractors against the Defense Department in blocking the release of information about quality of control processes that the defense contractors said were trade secrets. -db The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press March 25, 2010 By Nadia Tamez-Robledo A federal appeals court yesterday ruled in favor of two [...]

Federal judge orders release of animal testing records to animal rights group

The Department of Agriculture must release over 1,000 pages of animal testing records to an animal rights group, In Defense of Animals, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents. -DB Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Setember 24, 2009 By Miranda Fleschert The Department of Agriculture must disclose 1,017 [...]

Legality in question: Publication of stolen Twitter employee’s e-mails

A legal expert says that in the case of TechCrunch’s publication of stolen Twitter documents, should the matter ever go to trial, it may come down to whether the court considers bloggers “press” and thereby under the protection by California’s shield law. -DB MediaShift Commentary August 25, 2009 By Jeffrey D. Neuburger In June of this [...]