4. Nongovernmental bodies.

The Attorney General stated early on that the state college board is subject to the open meetings law. 1962-64 Op. Atty. Gen. 427. However, the legislature amended the open records law in 1996 to exempt "information developed, discovered, collected or received by or on behalf of faculty, staff, employees or students of the University of Vermont or the Vermont state colleges in the conduct of study, research or creative efforts on medical, scientific, technical, scholarly or artistic matters . . . until such data, records or information are published, disclosed in an issued patent or publicly released by the institution or its authorized agents." 1 V.S.A. § 317(b)(23), see ¶ II(A)(2)(23), infra. By enacting this amendment, the legislature partially overruled Animal Legal Defense Fund Inc. v. University of Vermont, 159 Vt. 133, 616 A.2d 224 (1992), and Sprague v. University of Vermont, 661 F. Supp. 1132 (D. Vt. 1987), in which both the Vermont Supreme Court and the United States District Court for the District of Vermont had held that the University of Vermont was subject to the open records law in connection with animal-testing research.