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I was reading through ARS 15-1640 and it mentions (emphasis mine):

A. The following records of a university under the jurisdiction of the Arizona board of regents are exempt from title 39, chapter 1, article 2:

    1. Information or intellectual property that is not available to the public and that is a trade secret as defined in section 44-401 or that is either:

        (a) Contained in unfunded grant applications or proposals.

        (b) Developed by persons employed by a university, independent contractors working with a university or third parties that are collaborating with a university, if the disclosure of this data or material would be contrary to the best interests of this state.

        (c) Provided to a university by a third party pursuant to the terms and conditions of a contract between the university and the third party. In order to qualify for the exemption prescribed in this subdivision, all of the following criteria must be met:

[...]

In some places (like here) it looks like they interpret this sentence to mean "Intellectual property that is a trade secret as defined in section 44-401 and that is contained in any of the following", but to me, it looks like it is saying something along the lines of "Information or intellectual property as defined in 44-401 or meets one of the following conditions"

Which is correct? Or is there some third more subtle interpretation that is most correct?

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It seems that the second interpretation is the correct one, the first one was from an old version of the law, it was changed in 2012 to the current text. (the previous text read "Intellectual property that is a trade secret as defined in section 44-401 and that is contained in:")

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    I agree although it is sloppy drafting. You can only use ”either” when there are only 2 alternatives. For more than two you should use ”any one of” or similar.
    – Dale M ♦
    Commented Mar 19, 2019 at 4:27
  • @DaleM: I agree with the sloppy drafting comment, but I feel the drafter intended either "a trade secret as defined in section 44-401" inclusive or "one of the following list of exceptions". Luckily, I think that the intent of the legislation, defining exemptions for certain classes of records is clear enough, but yes, that is no excuse for bad practice, especially how convoluted legislation can get, with nest exceptions and exceptions to exceptions.
    – sharur
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 21:28

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