Protection for Commercially Sensitive Information in the FOI Legislation

How commercially sensitive information is treated in the Freedom of Information regime is always a contentious issue. Commercially sensitive information generally includes trade secrets and other commercially valuable information. Trade secrets are an independent legal concept by the class-based protection. Other commercially valuable information is a category of confidential information which is subject to harm test. Apart from this, public interest test and the third party consultation are also employed to protect commercially sensitive information..