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Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Morten Follow-Up: What Do Federal Agencies' Enabling Statutes Say About Their Power to Disclose Trade Secrets?

In my prior post I interviewed  Christopher Morten at Columbia Law School about his article "Publicizing Corporate Secrets," which is forthcoming in University of Pennsylvania Law Review.  Morten argues that federal agencies have much more power to publicly disclose trade secrets and confidential information collected from private companies than is commonly believed. He argues that sometimes agencies do have the authority to "break" corporate secrets, and sometimes they do not. His core insight is that ultimately it's the agencies' enabling statutes passed by Congress that dictate their power to disclose trade secrets and confidential information.  I will now post links and our discussion of the full text of some of these enabling statutes, so that readers can see the statutes and make their own interpretations.