From the Legal Scholars Network... Secrecy and Unaccountability: Trade Secrets in Our Public Infrastructure DAVID S. LEVINE Charlotte School of Law; Stanford University - Center for Internet and Society

Trade secrecy - the intellectual property doctrine that allows businesses to keep commercially valuable information secret for a potentially unlimited amount of time - is increasingly intruding in the operation of our public infrastructure, like voting machines, the Internet and telecommunications. A growing amount of public infrastructure is being provided by private entities that are holding critical information about their goods and services secret from the public. This Article examines this phenomenon, which is largely unexplored in legal scholarship, and identifies a significant conflict between the values and policies of trade secrecy doctrine and the democratic values of accountability and transparency that have traditionally been present in public infrastructure projects.