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Court says old type certificates not 'trade secrets'

By Dan Namowitz Ruling a long-sought victory for aircraft restorers Brent Taylor hopes that years of court battles he waged in a bid to keep antique aircraft flying are finally over. Meanwhile, Taylor and other antique aircraft devotees are cheering a Jan. 19 Federal District Court decision that struck down an argument that the FAA had used in "blanket refusals" to make old aircraft type certificate information available to antique aircraft owners and restorers. That argument--an assertion that releasing the information would reveal trade secrets--fell when Federal District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina granted a motion for summary judgment by Taylor, the Ottumwa, Iowa-based executive director of the Antique Airplane Association, in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit over access to design data and drawings for the 1930s-vintage Fairchild F-45. To read the complete article from AOPA Online, please click here.

Full post as published by The Trade Secrets Vault on February 04, 2011 (boomark / email).