Template:Confidentiality and regulatory disclosure

Information disclosed to a regulator is still confidential information

Don’t make the schoolboy error of excluding “information required to be disclosed to regulators or government authorities” from the definition of “confidential information”. Now, to be sure, this is a legitimate exception to a fellow’s general covenant not disclose confidential information to anyone — but it shouldn’t disqualify the information from being “confidential information” altogether. If it did, once you were required to give any information to a regulator, it would suddenly be open season and you could tell everyone about it. Not the intention.

One misconceived argument we have seen for this approach is as follows: “if I give information to a regulator then I cannot control what the regulator does with it. Regulators are all-powerful. They may publish sensitive information in the Luxembourger Wort for all I can do about it. Therefore your information, once I have rightly given it to a regulator, can no longer be treated as confidential.”

Not so fast: If you disclose my information legitimately to a regulator, and the regulator then discloses it to the world (whether or not legitimately) you have complied with the terms of your contract. Unless you have independently covenanted to procure that the regulator keeps it confidential (don’t do that: regulators are all-powerful, and you make yourself a hostage to fortune), you have not breached your NDA, and you cannot therefore be liable for resulting losses. They are regrettable externalities: obstreperous actions of impish third parties. On the other hand, if you disclose my information legitimately to a regulator, and then you separately disclose it to someone else, then you absolutely can and should remain liable for losses. If by disclosure to a regulator the information is deemed "no longer confidential" you would be free to disclose it to someone else without that sanction.