Hearst Corp. v. State, Office of State Comptroller

In Hearst Corp. v. State, Office of State Comptroller (24 Misc 3d 611, 631, 882 N.Y.S.2d 862 [Supreme Court, Albany County 2009]), the court found data to be proprietary because: (a) the information sought by petitioners is treated as confidential and proprietary. . . . ; (b) access to such information is not available to the public and is limited to licensees and other persons in a contractual relationship. . . .(who,. . . , have a duty to protect. . . confidences); (c) the requested information would function as a "blueprint" of the architecture of [SLM's] system. . . . Given these undisputed facts, it is reasonable to infer that the information sought by petitioners would be valuable "to potential competitors" and, therefore, its disclosure would cause competitive harm . . . .