Intellectual Property Law

Senator Barack Obama released several years worth of his tax records online late Tuesday, and in so doing called for rival Democrat senator Hillary Clinton to do the same.

"Senator Clinton recently claimed that she?s ?the most transparent figure in public life,? yet she?s dragging her feet in releasing something as basic as her annual tax returns,? said Obama communications director Robert Gibbs in a statement. ?Senator Clinton can?t claim to be vetted until she allows the public the opportunity to see her finances?particularly with respect to any investment in tax shelters.?

The Obama campaign placed online the senator's tax records between 2000 and 2006. 

Gibbs was referring to President Bill Clinton's stake in Yucaipa, a company headquartered in the Cayman Islands run by his personal friend and wealthy California businessman Ron Burkle. The Cayman Islands is known as a tax haven.

But Judicial Watch, a government transparency and litigation group that's received significant amounts of funding from conservatives, has questioned the Illinois senator's own willingness to pull back the curtain on his own records.

"It appears that Obama never kept records of his time in the Illinois state legislature, or he discarded them," wrote Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton in a recent newsletter. "Either way, he clearly intended to leave no paper trail."

Fitton said that his group has been seeking Obama's records from his time as state senator between 1996 and 2004, but so far it's come up empty.

But Andrew Rasiej, founder of the technology and politics web site TechPresident and the annual Personal Democracy Forum conference, said that Obama's latest move to distribute his tax information online is consistent with his general campaign theme of using technology to make government more accountable to the public.

"It's further indicative of the fact that he has made a public commitment to transparency, and that if he's elected president, we would probably have the most transparent government in history," he said.

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