Purdue University sued for being tight-lipped on Amazon deal by Liam O’Brien

When Purdue University announced their partnership with the retail giant, in which Amazon would set up and staff a retail store (really more of a drop-off/pickup location) on campus, it was positioned by the school as a win-win; students save money, the university gets a piece of the action, Amazon gets a bunch of new spend-y Prime subscribers, and everybody goes home happy with their textbooks, milk, and whatever else students buy. Everybody, that is, but local retailers, who are all but guaranteed a slow death.

Unsurprisingly, those local retailers aren’t happy, and they claim something may be rotten in Amazon and the university’s partnership agreement. Via the Indy Star:

The National Association of College Stores Inc. — a nonprofit trade organization representing more than 3,000 campus retail stores worldwide — requested and obtained a copy of the agreement university officials signed with Amazon, but multiple pages in the document had been redacted. The university, which is a public agency, asserted that the materials were redacted because they constitute trade secrets under Indiana’s public records law. The association, however, disagrees, claiming in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 that the redacted materials constitute public records that the university must release upon request.

The redacted bits, which include “square footage of the Amazon stores, information about ending the contract and content categorized as ‘special programs'”, would constitute a violation of the act by the university, not Amazon. The NACS obtained Amazon’s bookstore fostership agreement with UC Davis, which they claim was unredacted, as should Purdue’s be.

However, as The Digital Reader points out, the two deals are quite different; to turn a phrase, if UC Davis getting into bed with Amazon, Purdue is already moving in with them. And while the NACS is claiming the public and student body’s interest in transparency as their reason for bringing the suit, it would be to their advantage to have Amazon on the defensive about what qualifies a trade secret. If the case goes forward, it means that the elements of the contract that Purdue and Amazon hoped to keep classified may enter into the public record, and in doing so provide the NACS with a better idea of how Amazon plans to continue their incursion into college bookstore sales and eat the NACS’ lunch.

Amazon would predictably define “trade secret” rather widely (after all, this is a company that prefers vague ideas to straight answers), and Purdue has been known to put up a fight when it comes to handing over their internal paperwork. The NACS definitely has an upward not-actually-a-battle-we-just-want-all-the-facts ahead of them.