United Kingdom/Commonwealth: Confidential Pharmaceutical Data - Restricting Disclosure in Court Proceedings
Friday, March 28th, 2008As noted in an earlier post, pharmaceutical companies produce a wealth of valuable and commercially sensitive information, much of which needs to be kept beyond competitors’ reach. Nevertheless, a measure of disclosure is commonplace given the data and fairness requirements of regulators, codes on access to government information or freedom of information legislation, and the disclosure process in civil proceedings if a company finds itself in court. Following the article mentioned and available in the earlier post (“Protecting the Confidentiality of Pharmaceutical Data” (2003) 14(4) Regulatory Affairs Journal (Pharma) 261 (part 1) and 343 (part 2)), in a separate article published in January 2004 I provided an overview of the circumstances in which the disclosure in court proceedings of commercially sensitive data can be restricted, primarily from an English perspective but also by reference to Commonwealth authorities. In particular, that subsequent article addresses:
the relevance of confidentiality to disclosure obligations;
pre-action disclosure and confidentiality orders;
circumscribed disclosure of confidential documents and trade secrets in civil proceedings;
the circumstances in which a proceeding or part of it may be heard in private; and
post-trial confidentiality orders over documents disclosed during civil proceedings. You can see the whole article here.
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