The court of appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part a district court judgment. The court held that when an agency freely discloses to a third party confidential information covered by a FOIA exemption without limiting the third-party’s ability to further disseminate the information then the agency waives the ability to claim an exemption to a FOIA request for the disclosed information.
Copyright and trademark attorney Samuel Watkins sent several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to various large ports in the United States. The subject of Watkins’s FOIA requests were 19 C.F.R. §133.21(c) Notices of Seizure of Infringing Merchandise. The requests specifically sought all notices to trademark owners required to be made under §133.21(c) for specified years regarding merchandise seized at the various ports as being counterfeit.
