Records, subject to chapter 42.56 RCW, filed with the commission or the attorney general from any person which contain valuable commercial information, including trade secrets or confidential marketing, cost, or financial information, or customer-specific usage and network configuration and design information, shall not be subject to inspection or copying under chapter 42.56 RCW: (1) Until notice to the person or persons directly affected has been given; and (2) if, within ten days of the notice, the person has obtained a superior court order protecting the records as confidential. The court shall determine that the records are confidential and not subject to inspection and copying if disclosure would result in private loss, including an unfair competitive disadvantage. When providing information to the commission or the attorney general, a person shall designate which records or portions of records contain valuable commercial information. Nothing in this section shall prevent the use of protective orders by the commission governing disclosure of proprietary or confidential information in contested proceedings.
RCW 80.04.095
Protection of records containing commercial information.
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case Koenig v. City of Des Moines (2006)
Most recently applied in 190 Wash. 2d 769 - Lyft, Inc. v. City of Seattle (May 2018)
2005 c 274 s 358; 1987 c 107 s 1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.