This week's C&EN

Lots of interesting stuff in this week's C&EN:

• Looks like the Patent Office might escape sequestration, if Congress makes it happen. (by Glenn Hess)
• Carmen Drahl writes up the Charest v. Harvard/Myers story, with lots of great links to original documents (including Tetraphase's SEC filings.) 
• Non-classical carbocation captured via X-ray crystallography! (by Jyllian Kemsley)
• I enjoyed Carmen Drahl's writeup of the career development conference for chemical biologists held at UIUC recently. I think it is very interesting how they're addressing non-traditional jobs upfront. 
• UCLA's James Gibson disputing Dow/Banholzer's "Industry is 11 times safer than academia" stats in the letters section. Much as I might tend to hold CLS at arm's length, I think it's up to Dow to lay bare exactly how they derived their statistics. 
• An article on IP and cybersecurity by Glenn Hess has a small sidebar on how trade secrets can be tracked through TSCA and FOIA (emphasis mine): 

"Information not claimed as confidential can be made available to interested parties in a number of ways, including through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Most FOIA requests to EPA are made by companies, many of which are overseas, not curious members of the public, Newton points out. “In many cases, the confidentiality of chemical identity is all a specialty chemical producer has to remain in business,” he remarks. “The highly specialized nature of the chemistry performed by our sector makes our members particularly vulnerable.”

Count me a little skeptical (if the company wants to find out what's in your stuff, getting a sample and doing some testing seems to be more straightforward, no?). That said, an interesting point.