Following a three year battle to prevent disclosure of research data, Queen's University Belfast was ordered by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to provide raw research data under Freedom of Information regulations or, more specifically in this case, Environmental Information Regulations. QUB refused a request for the disclosure of raw tree data gathered over a 40 year period under regulation 12 of EIR. They claimed the information was unfinished, that disclosure would adversley affect intellectual property rights and that the information was commercially confidential. They also stated that there was a risk of harm to QUB, negligible public interest in the release of the information and that the request was manifestly unreasonable. At the end of March 2010, the ICO found that the data was held electronically and therefore did not place a significant burden on QUB to disclose it, the claim that the data was meaningless was not a valid consideration and, as the data had already been collected, it was not incomplete. The ICO also said that QUB did not in fact hold intellectual property rights in the raw data itself and that, although the information was commercial in nature, it was not subject to confidentiality as it had not been shared with any other party. In conclusion the ICO held that QUB had wrongly applied exceptions in regulation 12 and failed to comply with operational regulations in its handling of the complaint. This decision has obvious far reaching consequences for institutions holding raw data for the purposes of research, even where that research is as yet unpublished. The issues raised here link with the recent University of East Anglia case referred to in an earlier JISC Legal news item. The full ICO report can be accessed at: http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/decisionnotices/2010/fs_50163282.pdf.