The follow kind situation is what I think motivates fighting FOIAs:
Depending on your field a research could take a few years to develop a technique. The technique by itself will not produce a very valuable publication, but the results it can reveal could be ground breaking.
In the grant proposal, in order to convince those who are judging of the value of the technique, you detail some of the hard won technique. A competitor issues a FOIA learns the technique and may very well be able to publish the ground breaking results first.
This means years of work and funding have had considerably less benefit then anticipate. It is likely it will be a little harder to win additional grant/funding due to several apparently unproductive years on the researches part.
Depending on your field a research could take a few years to develop a technique. The technique by itself will not produce a very valuable publication, but the results it can reveal could be ground breaking.
In the grant proposal, in order to convince those who are judging of the value of the technique, you detail some of the hard won technique. A competitor issues a FOIA learns the technique and may very well be able to publish the ground breaking results first.
This means years of work and funding have had considerably less benefit then anticipate. It is likely it will be a little harder to win additional grant/funding due to several apparently unproductive years on the researches part.