357.111—Public and proprietary information.
(a)
Any person who submits information in connection with a short supply review may designate that information, or any part thereof, as proprietary, thereby requesting that the Secretary treat that information as proprietary. The Secretary normally will not treat as proprietary any information not designated as proprietary by the submitter. The submitter must file four copies of a public version of the proprietary information, including any public summaries as substitutes for the portions for which the person has requested proprietary treatment. The submitter must conspicuously mark in the upper right corner of both versions, the words “proprietary document” or “public version of proprietary document”, as appropriate. Each separate designation of information as proprietary shall be accompanied by:
(1)
A full statement of the reason or reasons why the submitter believes that the information is entitled to proprietary treatment; and
(i)
A full public summary or approximated presentation of all proprietary information, incorporated in the public version of the document (generally data in numerical form relating to prices and costs, operating rates, and deliveries of individual firms shall be presented in figures ranged within 10 percent of the actual figure); or,
(ii)
A statement that the information is not susceptible to such a summary or presentation, accompanied by a full statement of the reasons supporting this conclusion.
(b) Proprietary treatment.
The Secretary normally will consider the following factual information to be business proprietary, if so designated by the submitter:
(1)
Business or trade secrets concerning the nature of a product or production process, if unique or not known to the industry;
(6)
Any other specific business information which the submitter can reasonably demonstrate would be likely to cause substantial harm to the submitter's competitive position if released.
(c) Confidentiality maintained.
Information that the Secretary designates as proprietary will not be disclosed to any person (other than officers or employees of the United States Government who are directly concerned with the short supply determination) without the consent of the submitter unless disclosure is ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction.
(d) Public information.
The Secretary normally will consider the following to be public information:
(1)
Factual information and written argument that is not designated business proprietary by the submitter;
(6)
Suppliers contacted, when they were contacted, and the reasons they cannot supply the product, and
(e) Treatment of information where request for proprietary treatment is denied.
If the Secretary denies a request for proprietary treatment of information submitted in connection with a request for a short supply allowance, or determines that information claimed not susceptible to a non-proprietary summary is in fact capable of such summary, the Secretary promptly will notify the submitter of that determination. Unless the submitter thereafter agrees that the information (including any summarized or approximated presented thereof) may be treated as public information, or provides a summary of matters found to be capable of such summary, such information (including any summarized approximated presentation thereof) will be returned to the submitter and not considered in the short supply determination.