Obama Administration sued over its secretive trade negotiations

For the last few years, the Obama Administration has been negotiating a treaty known as the Trans Pacific Partnership. While the treaty is officially focused on promoting international trade, it also includes language on a number of other issues. Critics have warned that the "intellectual property" section could force the United States to adopt legal changes favorable to copyright holders. But when critics of these policies have sought details about what the Obama Administration is negotiating, they have been rebuffed. So the news site IP Watch filed a lawsuit to force the US Trade Representative to release more documents related to the treaty.

The lawsuit argues that USTR failed to adequately respond to a Freedom of Information Act request the news organization filed more than a year ago. "It's really only the American public that's been shut out of access to these documents," says Joshua Weinger, a law student at Yale. The Obama Administration has shared some of the documents at issue in the lawsuit with foreign governments and others with domestic industry groups. But the documents are not available to the general public, and academics and public interest groups interested in IP issues have struggled to obtain information about the treaty. Weinger is part of a team of students in Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic that has been helping IP Watch reporter William New seek access to TPP-related documents. "It seems puzzling to us that any of these documents should be classified," Weinger argues, since the documents they're seeking relate to copyright and patent law, not normally regarded as national security issues.