Thursday, February 9, 2012

Are Insurance Filings Exempt as Trade Secrets?

(c) sasha stim-fogel
Dear Rich: My question is, out of the 43 states that have adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, which of those states exempt trade secrets from becoming public information in an insurance filing (insurance filing)? I need to know this for my job and I need to find out what language each state uses to exempt the insurance filing. For example, Alaska has adopted the UTSA (Alaska, Stat. Secs. 45.50.910 et seq.). So now I need to find out if Alaska exempts trade secrets from becoming public information. Our apologies, but 47 (not 43) states and the District of Columbia have adopted some version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA). We recently updated our site to include more current adoptees. (The remaining UTSA holdouts are New York, Massachusetts, and Texas).
Where in the world is ... We couldn't tell you which states have exempted insurance filings as trade secrets because that information -- as  far as we can tell -- is not provided in each state's UTSA. For example, Alaska's trade secret law makes no mention of Alaska's trade secret exemption for insurance filings (scroll down to Sec. 21.39.035). This article can start you on the right course but you may want to suggest that your employer subscribe to a service from a company like this. And of course, as you may know all this may be changing as the trend may be heading away from secrecy in insurance filings.

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