By Luke Jennett
Ames Tribune

A court of appeals decision today affirmed that the Iowa Department of Transportation must turn over a copy of a report it made on products from a company that supplies temporary traffic signals.

The suit was brought against the Iowa DOT and Horizon Signal Technologies by O.M.J.C. Signal, Inc., a competitor of Horizon that filed a petition for a declaratory judgment in Story County asking the court to determine whether Horizon was being held to compliance with federal standards regarding the temporary traffic signals it was providing to the DOT.

The court of appeals confirmed a district court ruling that the reports represented the results of standardized tests that did not represent protected trade secrets.