Intellectual Property Law

In a follow-up to a previous post which can be found here, “PETA has filed a request for a rehearing with the Mississippi Supreme Court after the justices ruled that the information PETA was seeking about animal experiments at Mississippi State University (MSU) for cat- and dog-food company Iams is exempt from public disclosure.” You can read about it here.

Key graph: “The Supreme Court ruled that details of the experiments? protocols?such as the number of animals used, what surgeries were performed, and if any of the animals were killed?would reveal confidential business information and were, therefore, exempt from disclosure under the Mississippi Public Records Act. PETA asserts that the court failed to acknowledge that state law requires government entities to separate exempt material and release non-exempt material. And even though Iams presented no specific evidence that the requested material contained proprietary information, the court has denied PETA all the requested documents.”

This is an interesting case which pits trade secrets against the public’s right to know. Right now, the trade secrets are winning–which I think is a good thing. But who knows, maybe PETA is right and the documents should be made public. I can see arguments on both sides. We’ll continue to follow this intriguing matter.