PTO Speechless!! Fed. Cir. Says Evidence Needed for Ineligibility

Despite contrary statements in certain board decisions,¹ the patent office’s guidance to the examining corps has been consistent: facts are unnecessary when rejecting a claim under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Early on, the patent office’s July 2015 subject matter eligibility update responded to concerns about whether examiners were properly making out a prima facie case of ineligibility by stating that patent eligibility was a question of law, and that no facts were necessary to make out a prima facie case.² The MPEP has also been amended to reflect this view,³ and the superfluity of facts to eligibility appears to be a foundational assumption for the application of section 101 during examination.⁴

However, in light of the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Berkheimer v. HP, Inc., the end of fact-free subject matter eligibility determinations may be near. In Berkheimer, the claims at issue were found to be directed to an abstract idea, so the case turned on whether the claims included additional elements sufficient to transform the nature of the claim into a patent eligible application rather than a patent ineligible abstraction.⁵ The district court found that there were no such additional elements, because what additional elements the claims did recite described “steps that employ only ‘well-understood, routine, and conventional’ computer functions … at a high level of generality.”⁶ The patent owner disagreed, arguing that portions of the patent’s specification referring to various benefits provided by the invention contradicted the finding that the claims described well, understood, routine, and conventional activities.⁷ The Federal Circuit then analyzed the claims and, because it found that some of them recited steps for providing the improvements described in the specification,⁸ vacated the district court’s holding of ineligibility.⁹ More important than the result though, was the reasoning. The Federal Circuit specifically explained that the allegations of improved results from the specification created an issue of fact,¹⁰ and that “the district court erred in concluding that there are no underlying factual questions to the § 101 inquiry.”¹¹ It also stated explicitly that “whether a claim element or combination of elements is well-understood, routine and conventional to a skilled artisan in the relevant field is a question of fact” and that “[a]ny fact, such as this one, that is pertinent to the invalidity conclusion must be proven by clear and convincing evidence.”¹² – i.e., the exact opposite of the patent office’s position on the issue.

Before posting this article, I called the PTO’s office of patent legal administration to ask if they were aware of the Berkheimer case and if they intended to update their guidance in light of its holding. While I was told that they were aware of the case, the person I spoke to did not know if there were plans to issue updated guidance based on its reasoning, or (if such updated guidance was in the works) when such updated guidance might be issued. Accordingly, at least for the foreseeable future, it appears that the primary channel for Examiners to be made aware of the Berkheimer case may be through their interactions with patent prosecutors.¹³ However, given the potential significance of treating eligibility as involving underlying questions of fact, it would seem highly inappropriate for the PTO not to react to Berkheimer. As a result, while they may not be saying anything about it now, this is an issue where they shouldn’t remain speechless for long.

Photo credit from Flikr.com.

¹ See, e.g., Ex parte Poisson, Appeal No. 2012-011084 on application 12/427,040 (PTAB 2015) at 5:

The PTO bears the initial burden of establishing a prima facie case of patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Because the facts and evidence do not support the finding that claim 1 is “an attempt to claim a new set of rules for playing a card game” and therefore, necessarily, is an abstract idea, a prima facie case of patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 has not been established in the first instance by a preponderance of the evidence.

² July 2015 Update: Subject Matter Eligibility at 6:

Concern was expressed about examiners satisfying the proper burden for a prima facie case when making an eligibility rejection. … The courts consider the determination of whether a claim is eligible (which involves identifying whether an exception such as an abstract idea is being claimed) to be a question of law. Accordingly, courts do not rely on evidence that a claimed concept is a judicial exception, and in most cases resolve the ultimate legal conclusion on eligibility without making any factual findings.

³ See MPEP 2106.07(a)(III) (“the courts do not require any evidence when conducting the significantly more inquiry, even where additional elements were identified as well-understood, routine and conventional in the art.”).

⁴ See, e.g., Office Action of August 28, 2015 on application 12/610,069 at 18-19:

Applicants argue that the Examiner “merely asserts the claim is directed to the abstract idea of generating, transmitting, and providing an advertisement to a consumer.” The undersigned notes that the unsupported assertion appears to be little more than boilerplate not supported by an[y] evidence or analysis.” Examiner replies that the “courts consider the determination of whether a claim is eligible (which involves identifying whether an exception such as an abstract idea is being claimed) to be a question of law. Accordingly, courts do not rely on evidence that a claimed concept is a judicial exception, and in most cases resolve the ultimate legal conclusion on eligibility without making any factual findings.”

⁵ Berkheimer at 11-12:

Because the claims are directed to an abstract idea, we proceed to the second step of the Alice inquiry. At step two, we “consider the elements of each claim both individually and ‘as an ordered combination’ to determine whether the additional elements ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent eligible application.” Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 78–79).

⁶ Id. at 13.

⁷ Id.

⁸ Id. at 17 (“These claims recite a specific method of archiving that, according to the specification, provides benefits that improve computer functionality.”).

⁹ Id. (“We vacate the district court’s grant of summary judgment that claims 4-7 are ineligible under § 101 and remand for further proceedings.”).

¹⁰ Id. (“there is at least a genuine issues of material fact in light of the specification regarding whether claims 4-7 archive documents in an inventive manner that improves these aspects of the disclosed archival system.”)

¹¹ Id. at 14.

¹² Id. at 12.

¹³ Indeed, even in areas where the PTO does provide guidance, interactions with patent attorneys may constitute a type of on the job training that could have a significant impact on how applications are handled. See Who Trains Whom, JUST-N-EXAMINER, available at http://just-n-examiner.livejournal.com/25641.html (visited Feb. 13, 2018).

Fed. Cir. Hears Mobile Interface Eligibility Appeal - What Happened Next BLEW MY MIND

The result of Core Wireless v. LG should have been a foregone conclusion. Core Wireless was a subject matter eligibility case, which are notoriously difficult for patentees. Moreover, the invention in Core Wireless was remarkably similar to the invention found ineligible in Intellectual Ventures I v. Erie Indemnity. In Core Wireless, the claims were directed to “an improved user interface for computing devices,” and the improvement was creating a list of commonly accessed functions and data that could be accessed directly from a main menu. In Intellectual Ventures, the claims were directed to a “‘mobile interface’ on a user’s device” and improved on the prior art by “dislay[ing] a plurality of pointers to user-specific resources and information stored on the user’s various devices.” The fact that the claims in Core Wireless improved on the prior art by allowing information to be directly accessed from a main menu also invites comparison with the claims found ineligible in Apple v. Ameranth, which “claim[ed] systems including menus with particular features.”

Despite the Federal Circuit’s track record and the apparent similarity to the Intellectual Ventures and Apple cases, the Federal Circuit found that Core Wireless’ claims were patent eligible. Even more shocking, the Federal Circuit reached its finding because Core Wireless’ claims were not directed to an abstract idea, rather than because of any specific inventive contribution that might have distinguished the claims at issue in Intellectual Ventures and Apple. Accordingly, Core Wireless can arguably be treated as standing for the proposition that any “improved user interface for computing devices” should be treated as patent-eligible despite the contrary conclusion that might previously have been implied by Intellectual Ventures and Apple.

However, it may also be possible to draw lessons from Core Wireless that don’t implicitly treat the Federal Circuit as an arbitrary body whose panels capriciously use section 101 as a pretext for enacting their policy preferences without regard to law or logic. In concluding that Core Wireless’ claims were eligible, the Federal Circuit emphasized that the claims actually required a specific way of improving on the interfaces of the prior art. By contrast, when finding the claims in Intellectual Ventures and Apple ineligible, it emphasized that they failed to recite any particular way their improvements would be implemented. Accordingly, one way of understanding the Federal Circuit’s user interface eligibility cases as part of a consistent body of law is to treat the eligibility determination as turning on whether a claim recites a specific means for implementing an improvement, rather than just the improvement itself. This approach to harmonizing the interface eligibility cases not only has the benefit of not cynically treating the Federal Circuit as not acting in good faith, but it’s also consistent with explanations given of the results of non-interface cases such as McRO v. Bandai Namco and Finjan v. Blue Coat.

In context, Core Wireless is an impressive result. Not only does an interface patent survive an eligibility challenge, but the Federal Circuit explained its holding in a way that could bring a measure of coherence to the chaotic world of subject matter eligibility. If you’re of a more cynical bent, it could just be enough to BLOW YOUR MIND.

A version of this article with supporting citations is available here.

Like Shark Tank? Wish it had more patents?

I'm a big fan of the show Shark Tank, and am always amazed at how it takes an inherently dry process (investment due diligence) and turns it into entertainment. In this video, I take that entertainment, and graft my own commentary on the patent issues raised by the business being vetted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Gn_so9y24. If you like Shark Tank, but wish it had more patents, this is definitely the video for you!

The effectiveness of incentives in changing patenting behavior

The first article in the BJHS December 2016 special issue (Authority and ownership: the growth and wilting of medicine patenting in Georgian England (hereinafter "Authority and Ownership")) describes a sudden rise and equally precipitous fall in the patenting of medicines in England in the mid eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Specifically, it describes how medicine patenting expanded in response to specific economic pressures - the emergence of a truly national market, and the concomitant increase in the importance of a patent as both a means of protection and a tool for legitimization.¹. It also describes how legal changes - judicial decisions tightening the disclosure requirements for a medicine patent² and, more importantly, the introduction of an excise stamp which could perform many of the same roles as a patent but was cheaper and easier to obtain³ - led to a corresponding downfall at the end of the period of study.

Reading through the article, I was struck by the responsiveness of patenting of medicine in Georgian England to the changes in incentives caused by the various legal and economic changes the article discusses. By contrast today, despite recent anti-patent changes such as the institution of post grant review proceedings in the AIA and the tightening of subject matter eligibility standards in Alice and Mayo, the number of patent applications filed per year has held roughly steady through the patent office's 2015 fiscal year.⁴ One reason for this potential difference in responsiveness? At the end of the period examined in the article, those who might otherwise have gotten a patent had a viable alternative in the form of an excise stamp. By contrast, today the policy changes which could serve to make patenting less attractive have not been accompanied by any alternative form of protection that would be patent holders could avail themselves of. As a result, because inventors today (like in Georgian England) are responsive to economic incentives, I predict that the current anti-patent policies will ultimately prove ineffective at changing behavior unless they are supplemented with some kind of alternative protection which could address the needs which inventors will otherwise look to have satisfied by the patent system (regardless of how hostile it becomes).

^1. Authority and Ownership at 553-54

The rise of medicine patenting was secondary to changes in the market for 'patent medicines' and their ownership in teh middle third of the eighteenth century. Helped by advertising in the expanding provincial press and improved communications, true national markets were created for several medicines, and the owners and wholesalers became more expert and specialized in supplying medicines across the country. ... So the participants in the industry had become more commercially aware, and they were probably seeking greater protection for their property. Also, selling medicines across the country needed better publicity and improved branding: both were enhanced by the authority of a royal patent.

^2. Authority and Ownership at 555

Lord Mansfield’s judgement in Liardet v. Johnson (1778) determined that the patentee should ensure that the specification was sufficient for a skilled tradesman to make the product without further experimentation after the patent had expired. This seemed to place the patentee under a positive obligation to provide useful information on the composition of the medicine. Once again, the specification was threatening the secrecy of a patented medicine, though several more legal judgments were required before the specification of patents became fully informative. By the end of the eighteenth century, an owner would be more concerned about the risks to the secrecy of his recipe posed by the specification than he would have been thirty years earlier.

^3. Authority and Ownership at 556

the major cause of the decline in medical patenting in the late eighteenth century was probably the introduction of the compulsory medicine excise stamp, another official device which could itself provide many of the benefits of the patent, but with much less expense and inconvenience.

^4. According to the patenting activities table in the patent office's 2015 performance and accountability report, there was a slight drop off in the number of patent filings from 2014-2015, and that the number of filings had increased in each of the preceding three years.

A new hope for inventors?

The Federal Circuit's recent opinion in Trading Technologies International, Inc. v. CQG, Inc., could be part of a broader trend signaling a liberalization of subject matter eligibility. As I wrote in an advisory with my colleague Doug Gastright, in that case, the Federal Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision that the asserted patent claims, which covered a software invention relating to improved graphical user interfaces for electronic stock trading, were patent eligible subject matter. In handing down this opinion, the Federal Circuit designated it as being non-precedential, which is usually done when a decision “does not add significantly to the body of law.” However, notwithstanding the designation of this case as non-precedential, it should still be seen as noteworthy as it indicates that that the Federal Circuit may be coalescing around a relatively inventor-friendly approach to determining subject matter eligibility.

The change in approach which this case represents can be seen by contrasting it with the Federal Circuit’s initial opinions applying the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank to software inventions. In those early decisions, the Federal Circuit almost seemed poised to adopt a per-se rule that software-implemented inventions which solved business problems were not patent eligible. However, Trading Technologies not only made clear that there was no such per-se rule, it also demonstrated that an invention which solves a problem specific to a particular computer-enabled business context could be patent eligible even if it didn’t include any further inventive concept to limit the scope of its claims. This result was consistent with, and built on, several recent Federal Circuit cases dealing with software-implemented inventions, including Enfish LLC v. Microsoft Corp., which established that a software invention could be patent eligible even if didn’t include any additional hardware-based inventive concept, and Bascom Global Internet Services, Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, which made clear that an invention which solved a business problem could be patent eligible if it was claimed in a manner which included an additional inventive concept. Accordingly, while non-precedential, the decision in Trading Technologies could be very useful as an inventor-friendly demonstration of how the Federal Circuit’s precedential decisions (e.g., Enfish and Bascom) should be applied.

The advisory I co-authored with Doug Gastright, which includes links to, and supporting citations from, the cases referred to above, is available here.

BJHS Special Issue on Patents

The December 2016 issue of the British Journal for the History of Science is a special issue titled Owning Health: Medicine and Anglo-American Patent Cultures, and reading through it has had the odd effect of making me simultaneously more disgusted with, and hopeful for, the U.S. patent system. The disgust is for the law as it is, as taking a historical view brings into sharp relief how inappropriate it is for cases like Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Mayo v. Prometheus and Alice v. CLS to graft 19th century anti-patent sentiment onto 21st century research and development. The hope is for the law as it is likely to be, as history also illustrates that the pressures which lead people to seek patent protection are deep-rooted and can ultimately sway even the most vociferous patent critics.

As it happens, I'm a firm believer in the much less quotable corollary to the saying "those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it" - i.e., "those who do not learn history make the rules, and so we are all doomed to repeat it, but that repetition can be made less onerous by learning history so you have some idea of what comes next." Accordingly, throughout the month I'll be blogging the individual articles from the December 2016 BJHS special issue, I'll be blogging the individual articles from the December 2016 special issue, addressing not only what they say about the past, but also what I think they can tell us about the future.

One thing website operators MUST do under new DMCA rule

My colleague Melissa Kern wrote an advisory about the copyright office's final rule regarding designating a DMCA agent. I thought it was important enough to repost (with permission) here.

Beginning December 1, 2016, the Copyright Office is rolling out its new online filing system for designating an agent to receive notices of copyright infringement. Website operators and other online service providers who store user content must submit new designated agent information electronically before the deadline to continue to take advantage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA’s) safe harbor from copyright infringement liability.

The new online filing system replaces the interim, paper-based system that had been used since the DMCA was first enacted in 1998. Under the old system, service providers could designate agents by sending in paper forms to the Copyright Office, which the Copyright Office then scanned and publicly posted in its directory of agents. Previous filings made under the old, paper-based system will continue to meet the DMCA’s requirements until they are phased out on December 31, 2017.

In connection with its new online filing system, the Copyright Office has issued its Final Rule relating to designating an agent with the Copyright Office. Highlights are as follows:

• Beginning December 1, 2016, the Copyright Office will no longer accept paper agent designations. All new filings must be made electronically using the online filing system.
  
• All service providers who have previously filed with the U.S. Copyright Office for DMCA safe-harbor protection under the old, paper-based system will have until December 31, 2017 to refile using the online filing system or lose the safe harbor protection. To do this, the service provider, or its designee, must establish an account that will be used to log into the system and register.
  
• The DMCA filings will expire every three years, so they will need to be renewed. The Copyright Office’s new system will send out email reminders.
  
• Filing fees are significantly lower ($6 per entity). There is no limit to the number of alternative names, URLs, service names, software names, and other commonly used names that can be listed on a service provider’s filing for this fee. All alternative names that the public would be likely to use to search for the service provider’s designated agent must be provided. However, separate legal entities must file separately and are not considered alternative names.
  
• The designated agent does not have to be a natural person. Service providers now have the option to designate a specific person (e.g., Jane Doe), specific position or title of an individual (e.g., Copyright Manager), a department within the service provider’s organization or within a third-party entity (e.g., Copyright Compliance Department), or the service provider or third-party entity generally (e.g., ACME Takedown Service).
  
• The designated agent’s physical mail address, telephone number and email address must be provided to the Copyright Office, and a designated agent may now provide a post office box to be displayed as its physical address. However, in a nod to technological obsolescence, a fax number is no longer required.
  

Melissa's original advisory can be found here.

Photo credit from Flikr.com.

One Weird Trick to Beat Alice Rejections (Examiners HATE This)

Alice v. CLS Bank has had a tremendous impact on how the patent office treats applications for business method inventions. Indeed, since the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice, the allowance rate for class 705 (Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, or Cost/Price Determination) dropped from a pre-Alice high of 31.2% in 2013, to 23.5% in 2014, 9.4% in 2015, and 4.7% in 2016. In a previous article I explained that one way to try and deal with this was to avoid claims which described something which sounded like a business method, even if doing so meant that the claims had to be somewhat vague. However, that may not be possible in all cases, and so the question becomes what to do when you’ve already been pigeonholed as a business method and need to overcome a rejection based on Alice.

The allowance rate statistics for class 705 reflect how difficult it is for a patent applicant to overcome an Alice rejection, but a close reading of the Federal Circuit’s opinion in Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corporation suggests a way forward. In that case, the Federal Circuit reversed a determination that a claim was directed to ineligible subject matter because “the district court oversimplified the self-referential component of the claims and downplayed the invention’s benefits.” However, the “self-referential component” wasn’t explicitly recited in the claim in question. Instead, it was incorporated as part of the supporting structure for a “means for configuring” that the claim actually did recite. Given that how a claim’s limitations should be treated when determining what it is “directed to” is often a point of contention when analyzing subject matter eligibility, the fact that means + function limitations are required by statute to be construed as covering the supporting structure described in the specification and its equivalents could provide a useful tool for responding to Alice rejections.

So can using means + function language in this way actually overcome Alice rejections? Yes, but examiners hate it. In one example from my practice, we were able to overcome an Alice rejection using a pre-appeal brief by pointing out that the rejection relied on improperly interpreting a software implemented means + function limitation as simply “a computer configured to perform processes.” Unfortunately, rather than this leading to the application being allowed, the result was that prosecution was re-opened with an 89 page long office action that attacked the means + function language at length for (allegedly) being both indefinite and not properly supported. Ultimately, we were able to overcome those rejections as well, but it required submission of a declaration walking through the corresponding structure in the specification and explaining how it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. I believe the fact that we got the rejections in the first place and had to make such a submission to overcome them reflects a significant level discomfort on the part of the examiner (which I believe is much less the exception than the rule within the PTO) with software implemented means plus function limitations. Nevertheless, despite the fact that it might require dealing with an unfamiliar mode of analysis, if you’re faced with an Alice rejection, means + function language might just be the one weird trick you need to get a patent.

For a version of this post with supporting citations, see here.

What's happened to software inventions? Five unexpected facts that will change how you see patent eligibility.

The third quarter of 2016 was a busy one for the Federal Circuit when it comes to subject matter eligibility – with Federal Circuit issuing more opinions addressing Alice in 3Q2016 than it had in the preceding three calendar quarters combined. After such a flurry of activity, it seems reasonable to wonder what remains of what we thought we knew about subject matter eligibility, especially since there seems to be some controversy even within the Federal Circuit itself. However, after looking at the cases the Federal Circuit has decided since Alice, I concluded that there are at least five things we now know about subject matter eligibility, starting with…

5. The name of the game is no longer the claim
Judge Giles Rich (about whom more later) famously stated that “the name of the game is the claim.” While the accuracy of that aphorism may have been arguable in the past, it has been effectively abjured in the Federal Circuit’s subject matter eligibility jurisprudence. Regardless of the ultimate conclusion, the Federal Circuit has turned time and again to the remainder of the specification when evaluating eligibility. Of course, that’s not to say that the claims are completely irrelevant to the subject matter eligibility determination. The Federal Circuit still at least ostensibly considers claim language when applying § 101, and their recent decisions have illustrated that…

4. It’s better for a claim to be vague than to describe something that sounds familiar or like a business method
What do you get for describing an invention as one which bases the management of records on rules rather than one which uses rules in patient record management? The answer is ten times more likely to get a patent, since “policy, rule-based management of records, files and documents” is included in class 707 (database and file management or data structures) while “patient record management” is included in class 705 (financial, business practice, management, or cost/price determination), and as of writing, the allowance rates for those classes are, respectively, 42.1% and 4.7%. There’s a similar difference between describing an invention as a way for organizing data, and as a way of organizing a particular type of data that a judge is likely to be familiar with – i.e., pictures. The former type of description is arguably covered by the holding that a model for organizing data in a database isn’t an abstract idea, while the latter type of description would result in an invention being deemed ineligible because organizing a specific type of data which is likely to be familiar to a judge – i.e., pictures – is an abstract idea. This is a big change from the days when vague claims would have hurt the chances for a patent to be upheld or issued, but that’s not the only change that’s stemmed from our current subject matter eligibility jurisprudence because…

3. Subject matter eligibility is exorcising the ghost of Judge Rich
Until the current line of subject matter eligibility cases, the impact of Judge Giles Rich on the patent law was undeniable. He was one of the architects of the 1952 patent act, and authored the decisions which established that patent eligibility hinged on the presence of a “useful, concrete and tangible result” and formally ended the practice of treating business methods as per se unpatentable. However, the current subject matter eligibility cases are directly undoing Judge Rich’s legal changes. This is somewhat ironic, since during the oral arguments for Bilski v. Kappos, Justice Stevens professed to admire Judge Rich, and asked if he had written anything on what methods should be patentable. Nevertheless, current subject matter eligibility jurisprudence rejects Judge Rich’s subject matter eligibility decisions in State Street and Alappat, and the necessity of identifying an “inventive concept” to establish a claim’s eligibility has reintroduced an amorphous “invention” requirement that Judge Rich had specifically criticized and that the 1952 act had sought to eliminate. You might imagine that the courts wouldn’t be undoing the life’s work of a hugely influential and well-respected figure in patent law unless there was a good reason, but you’d be wrong because …

2. There is no reason for what we’re doing
In Alice, the Supreme Court explained that the reason for treating certain subject matter as ineligible is to avoid pre-emption. However, current subject matter eligibility jurisprudence is clearly not limited to only invalidating claims where necessary to avoid preemption. Some opinions have also hinted at policy-based reasons for aggressively policing subject matter eligibility – e.g., that certain classes of patents, like those claiming the use of a computer to perform well-known business methods, don’t protect real innovation and therefore should be eliminated – which may be closer to the truth for why the law has developed as it has. However, other rules – such as the rule that simply performing a known business process in a particular commonplace technical environment is obvious – were already in place before we started focusing on eligibility, and could have been used to eliminate non-innovative patents without having to create an entirely new body subject matter eligibility law. Of course, it’s possible that some opinions’ inclusion of dismissive references to the “draftsman’s art,” or warning against the “in terrorem power of patent trolls” may reflect a distrust of patent attorneys and a desire to protect innovators from the cost and difficulty of dealing with them. However, if we’re trying to do is protect innovators, aggressively policing subject matter eligibility makes no sense because …

1. We’ve been down this road before, and the end result will be to transfer resources to attorneys while making patents more opaque
This isn’t the first time courts have tried to issue new rules to rein in what they see as an out of control patent system. Claim construction is treated as a matter of law because the Federal Circuit saw juries as being unpredictable and wanted to minimize their role in patent cases as a matter of policy. The result was to increase expense to patent litigants by making claim construction into a separate trial within a trial in virtually all cases, and to make patents more difficult/expensive to prepare and interpret by spawning rules such as that saying what the invention is or what features are important could result in narrow protection. Indeed, this isn’t even the first time aggressive policing of subject matter eligibility has been used to try and limit the patenting of software. In the 1960s, the patent office strongly opposed the patenting of software, and issued guidance that computer programming was unpatentable. The result was that the nascent software industry didn’t stop trying to get patents, but instead started describing their patents as being directed to something other than software. Is there any evidence that the current aggressive policing of subject matter eligibility will have similar effects? Well, we already know that, like treating claim construction as a matter of law, it’s generated a new kind of trial within a trial – the subject matter eligibility determination – which patent litigants have to go through and pay their attorneys to handle. We also know that aggressive policing of subject matter eligibility hasn’t stopped the number of patent application filings from increasing year over year for each of the past five years, but that it has resulted in recommendations to omit features – like a high-level summary or a discussion of economic benefits – that could otherwise make patents easier to read and understand. While we can’t be certain that history will repeat itself, if you think that policing subject matter eligibility will necessarily make the patent system easier, cheaper, or more efficient, or even that policing subject matter eligibility makes sense when evaluated on its own terms, may want to consider this history as a reason to change how they think of subject matter eligibility. For a version of this article with supporting citations, see here.

Can't Prohibit Sale of Violent Games

In this 7-2 opinion, the Supreme Court has struck down a California ban on sales of violent video games to minors. The result isn't at all surprising, though I'm guessing it will come as a shock to people like Roger "video games can never be art" Ebert. A few choice passages:

“‘From 1791 to the present,’ . . . the First Amendment has ‘permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas,’ and has never ‘include[d] a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations.’” United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 5) (quoting R. A. V. v. St. Paul, 505 U. S. 377, 382–383 (1992)). These limited areas—such as obscenity, Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 483 (1957), incitement, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444, 447–449 (1969) (per curiam), and fighting words, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 572 (1942)—represent “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem,” id., at 571–572.

NOTE: the above passage doesn't break any new ground. I just love it when the Supreme Court explains that the obscenity exception is well-defined and narrowly limited.

JUSTICE ALITO has done considerable independent research to identify, see post, at 14–15, nn. 13–18, video games in which “the violence is astounding,” post, at 14.

Yeah, researching...that's what he was doing...researching...

[in a footnote addressing studies purporting to link violent behavior and violent video games] 7One study, for example, found that children who had just finished playing violent video games were more likely to fill in the blank letter in “explo_e” with a “d” (so that it reads “explode”) than with an “r” (“explore”). App. 496, 506 (internal quotation marks omitted). The prevention of this phenomenon, which might have been anticipated with common sense, is not a compelling state interest.

Finally, another choice Scalia quote eviscerating California's purported rationale for the law:

California claims that the Act is justified in aid of pa-rental authority: By requiring that the purchase of violent video games can be made only by adults, the Act ensures that parents can decide what games are appropriate. At the outset, we note our doubts that punishing third partiesfor conveying protected speech to children just in casetheir parents disapprove of that speech is a proper gov-ernmental means of aiding parental authority. Accepting that position would largely vitiate the rule that “only inrelatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materi-als to [minors].” Erznoznik, 422 U. S., at 212–213.

All in all, a decision I agree with, and a nice way to end the term.

Root Cause of Privacy Furor: EULAs

People really care about the fact that their smartphones gather location data. It reached the frontpage of MSNBC.com with this article. It also inspired a flood of righteous indignation from Washington. From the article:

Why were Apple consumers never affirmatively informed of the collection and retention of their location data in this manner? Why did Apple not seek affirmative consent before doing so?

-Al Franken (D-Minn)

Collecting, storing and disclosing a consumer's location for commercial purposes without their express permission is unacceptable and would violate current law. That's why I am requesting responses to these questions to better understand Apple’s data collection and storage policies to make certain sensitive information can't be left behind for others to follow.

-Edward Markey (D-Mass)

It seems surprising that a large company like Apple wouldn't have tried to get consent from users to collect this location information, especially since it's so trivial to include it in the EULA which everyone agrees to anyway.

Oh, wait... (from the iPhone EULA, updated 5/8/09, available here)

(b) Location Data. Apple and its partners and licensees may provide certain services through your iPhone that rely upon location information. To provide these services, where available, Apple and its partners and licensees may transmit, collect, maintain, process and use your location data, including the real-time geographic location of your iPhone. The location data collected by Apple is collected in a form that does not personally identify you and may be used by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide location-based products and services. By using any location-based services on your iPhone, you agree and consent to Apple's and its partners' and licensees' transmission, collection, maintenance, processing and use of your location data to provide such products and services. You may withdraw this consent at any time by not using the location-based features or by turning off the Location Services setting on your iPhone. Not using these features will not impact the non location-based functionality of your iPhone. When using third party applications or services on the iPhone that use or provide locaiton data, you are subject to and should review such third party's terms and privacy policy on use of location data by such third party applications or services.

(emphasis in original)

I wonder how many of those Senators read the EULA before pontificating about Apple not getting consent for collecting location data. I wonder how many consumers who have privacy concerns about their location actually read the EULA before agreeing to it. My guess is that the answer to both questions is none. That isn't to say that there isn't a real problem. After all, I think there is a big conflict between EULAs and privacy, and that that conflict is a matter of significant public concern.

But unless there's more to the story than is currently being reported, the problem isn't that people's privacy rights have been violated, it's that they were inadvertently thrown away.

Data privacy legislation introduced

Per Wired.com, Senators Kerry and McCain have proposed legislation that would give web users the right not to be tracked while on line (the text of the bill can be found here). While this sounds like a step forward for consumer privacy, the legislation has not been well received by privacy advocates. According to the article:

The ACLU and others would prefer what is being touted as a “universal opt-out” in which consumers could one-stop shop and end all tracking by using a national registry of sorts. The Federal Trade Commission suggested such legislation in December.

“Consumers need strong baseline safeguards to protect them from the sophisticated data profiling and targeting practices that are now rampant online and with mobile devices. We cannot support the bill at this time,” Consumer Watchdog, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and Privacy Times wrote McCain and Kerry on Tuesday.

While I have concerns about the proposed legislation, I don't know that I agree with the sentiments expressed by quoted advocacy organizations. True, the bill could do more for privacy. However, the U.S. has generally been slow to enact laws protecting privacy, so letting the perfect be the enemy of the good in this case doesn't seem to make sense. Also, the bill (at least as proposed) does do more than prevent tracking. For example, for example, section 101 requires the FTC to make rules requiring covered entities to establish security measures to protect the data they do collect and section 202(A)(4) requires the FTC to make rules enabling individuals to correct information stored about them. There are also provisions requiring covered entities to design their products with privacy in mind (section 103) and to minimize the data they collect (section 301). These are all potentially helpful provisions, and the fact that they weren't mentioned indicates to me that the bill might not be getting all the credit it deserves.

With that having been said, I do have two problems with the bill that (if anyone were interested in my opinion) would stop me from supporting it. First, as mentioned in the Wired article, it preempts potentially more stringent state laws (section 405). This is a significant problem, as states are generally well ahead of the federal government on privacy issues. Second, it specifically states that it does not create any kind of private right of action (section 406). This is also a significant issue, since giving people the right to sue would likely result in much more vigorous enforcement of the law than simply relying on the FTC.

The bottom line for me is that, while the legislation includes a number of privacy protective features, its incompatibility with stronger state laws, as well as its lack of a private right of action mean that, if passed, it probably wouldn't help (and might even hurt) consumer privacy rights.

Geolocation Bill Seeks to Unify Fourth Amendment Protections

The following guest post is provided by Sonya Ziaja, J.D. Sonya is the co-owner of Ziaja Consulting LLC, a California based consulting group. She writes regularly for LegalMatch's Law Blog and Ziaja Consulting's blog, Shark. Laser. Blawg.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is in the process of crafting a bill to place legal limitations on the use of geolocation technologies.

Geolocation is commonplace nowadays. People play geolocation games (Foursquare, etc.). And geolocation technologies are encouraged to protect public safety (FCC’s Enhanced 911 rule). To some extent we are comfortable with broadcasting our location, which is well and good so long as doing so is harmless. There is, however, a less carefree side to geolocation--especially where it comes into conflict with the protections of the fourth amendment against unreasonable searches.

Over the past few years, law enforcement has increasing relied on geolocation techniques to track citizens without first obtaining a warrant. Doing so is at least questionably constitutional, if not outright illegal. Law enforcement makes use of both cell phone tracking and secretly tagging vehicles with GPS devices, all without court authorization.

The courts are split on the fourth amendment issues this issue raises. The Ninth Circuit in US v. Pineda-Moreno, for example, held that surreptitiously tagging a vehicle with a GPS device does not require a warrant because it is a substitute for “following a car on a public street, that is unequivocally not a search within the meaning of the [fourth] amendment.” The D.C. Circuit, however, takes the opposite view. In US v. Maynard, the D.C. Circuit held that a warrant is constitutionally necessary before police attach a GPS device to a suspect’s car. The court also specifically rejected the automobile exception argument, stating that

the automobile exception permits the police to search a car without a warrant if they have reason to believe it contains contraband; the exception does not authorize them to install a tracking device on a car without the approval of a neutral magistrate.

A recent case highlights the split. Earlier this March, a twenty-year old college student from San Jose, California brought suit against the FBI for secretly tagging his car without a warrant. Not surprisingly, he has decided to file in Washington D.C., rather than in California.

This circuit split is part of the impetus behind Senator Wyden’s bill--the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act, or GPS Act. The bill aims to clarify the law, addressing multiple forms of geolocation, covering both information gained through cell phone use and covertly tagging vehicles. The hope is that the bill will create a uniform policy that protects both privacy and public safety.

To balance privacy and safety, the bill provides exemptions for emergency cases--for example in cases of national security of when the user’s life is at risk--when police would not need to obtain a warrant. These exemptions have been the most contentious aspect of the bill. Paul Wormelli, executive of the Integrated Justice Information Systems Institute, has been particularly vocal about his concerns that the bill’s exceptions are too vague and would have a chilling effect on officers.

The bill is still in the early stages, however, and has not been formally introduced in the Senate. The language may need clarifying, but at the moment, the GPS bill looks to be our best bet to address the constitutional issues raised by widespread use of geolocation technologies.

Use of the Stored Communications Act to Get Email Without a Warrant Violates Fourth Amendment

Most modern email services allow people to keep messages indefinitely, and provide their users with enough space that doing so is actually an option. As a result, many people use their email accounts as a long term data archive, storing messages going back years.

So what does this have to do with privacy? Well, the stored communications act was written back in the days when email was much more akin to a mailbox. Because of this, it treats old email in a manner which is similar to how one might treat abandoned mail, and provides a mechanism in 18 U.S.C. 2703(d) to allow the government to get access to it without a warrant.

Actually, it provided a mechanism to allow the government to get access without a warrant. That changed with the case of U.S. v. Warshak, which found the government's use of section 2703(d) to obtain incriminating emails without a warrant violated the fourth amendment.

The facts of the case are extreme, and make for entertaining reading. The main defendant, Steven Warshak, owned Berkeley Premium Neutraceuticals, the company behind the once ubiquitous commercials for Enzyte. According to the opinion, Warshak had owned a number of other businesses. However, Berkeley stood out, both because of the success of Enzyte, and because of its extremely slimy business practices. A sample:

in November 2003, Berkeley hired a company called West to handle “sales calls that were from . . . Avlimil or Enzyte advertisements.” During the calls, West’s representatives asked customers if they wanted to be enrolled in the auto-ship program, and over 80% of customers declined. When Warshak learned what was happening, he issued instructions to “take those customers, even if they decline[d], even if they said no to the Auto-Ship program, go ahead and put them on the Auto-Ship program.” A subsequent email between Berkeley employees indicated that “all [West] customers, whether they know it or not, are going on [auto-ship].” As a result, numerous telephone orders resulted in unauthorized continuity shipments.

Those practices eventually led to a 112 count indictment, and the government obtaining thousands of incriminating emails from Warshak's service provider without a warrant under section 2703(d) of the stored communications act. After his conviction, Warshak appealed to the Sixth Circuit court of appeals arguing (among other things) that the emails were obtained in violation of the 4th amendment, and therefore should have been excluded as evidence.

While the Sixth Circuit upheld Warshak's conviction, it agreed that the warrantless search of Warshak's emails violated the fourth amendment. First, it established that Warshak had a subjective expectations that his emails would remain private. Indeed, the court said the very fact that the emails contained so much incriminating information was evidence that Warshak saw them as private correspondence. Next, the court asked whether the expectation of privacy in emails was one society was prepared to recognize as reasonable. To answer, the court addressed the heavy reliance of modern society on email, and analogized it to other types of communication that were traditionally protected under the fourth amendment. In the end, it concluded that

because they did not obtain a warrant, the government agents violated the Fourth Amendment when they obtained the contents of Warshak’s emails. Moreover, to the extent that the SCA purports to permit the government to obtain such emails warrantlessly, the SCA is unconstitutional.

The decision didn't do much for Warshak. The court also held that the government had been relying in good faith on the act, and so the emails shouldn't be excluded. However, it will help everyone else down the line, because the good faith rule can't be used to justify actions that are clearly inconsistent with the court's holding.

DJ Hero

I got an anonymous comment to my last post on the TSA's new security procedures saying that there has to be something we can do, rather than just submitting to whatever is advanced under the name of security. As it happens, there are several things that people can do to react to the TSA's new procedures.

The most well publicized protest is probably National Opt Out Day (warning - page includes naked picture taken with TSA's new scanners), wherein people will opt for being groped by a TSA agent to slow down processing of fliers on November 24 - the busiest flying day of the year. If that's your cup of tea, then it's certainly your right to opt out of the scanning (which you might want to do anyway, for both health and privacy reasons). For me though, I'm not at all interested in being groped by the TSA, even for the noble purpose of protest.

If you're more interested in an ineffectual protest with a touch of humor, you can try radiation shielding undergarments, or a bill or rights luggage tag (all of which are described in this article). My guess is that the bill of rights tag would just be ignored (much like the actual bill of rights), and that the metal undergarments would result in a referral for one of the TSA's special enhanced pat downs. Still, if you want to make a statement, those are another way to do it.

As a lawyer, my first thought was a declaratory judgment action seeking to preliminarily and permanently enjoin the TSA from implementing the new security measures. My next thought was that that was so obvious that someone must have already done it. However, a quick Google search didn't turn up much more than this thread, so maybe that's still available. The problem with this approach is that these types of DJ actions are really hard to win, and you may get bumped on procedural grounds before the judge ever reaches the merits of the case.

In the end though, my guess is that what will be necessary to reverse these new procedures is people (finally) taking a stand for privacy, and bringing enough bad press to the TSA and pressure on their elected representatives, that the TSA's current policies become radioactive. I'm not thrilled that we've reached that point, but it is a free country, and if our elected representatives make enough intrusive laws, sometimes the only way to respond is by replacing them with people who aren't so keen to invade people's privacy.

Fighting the TSA

The Internet is currently burning up with a story about a man who would rather not fly than submit to the TSA's intrusive screening procedures, and how the TSA reacted to him. To make a long story short, once he decided to leave the security area and ask for a ticket refund, a TSA agent told him he had to return to the security area or would be subject to a civil fine of up to $10,000. A normal person's reaction to reading this story might be outrage at this sort of petty tyranny. As a lawyer, my first reaction was to question whether the threat was real. That is, is this a case of abuse of power by a misguided TSA employee acting outside his authority, or is it a case of abuse of power by a misguided TSA employee enforcing an egregiously bad law?

After about an hour of searching, I strongly suspect that this is a case of abuse of power by a misguided TSA employee acting outside his authority, though I have not been able to convince myself of that fact, and so the normal disclaimers about nothing on this blog being legal advice should go at least double for this post.

The reason I strongly suspect that this is a case of abuse of power by a misguided TSA employee acting outside his authority is that the regulations on penalties and prohibitions mostly focus on making sure that you can't get certain things into secure areas. For example, 49 C.F.R. 1540.107 says that no one can enter the sterile area or board an aircraft without going through a screening. However, in this case, the putative flyer wasn't trying to get into the sterile area or an aircraft without going through a screening - he made a conscious decision to avoid a screening by not entering the sterile area or boarding an aircraft. Similarly, 49 C.F.R. 1540.109 prohibits threatening, interfering with, assaulting or intimidating screening personnel. However, in this case, the putative flyer wasn't interfering at all. Indeed, the screening personnel could have done their jobs more easily if they had simply let him leave the airport. Because there is no evidence that leaving the airport had any adverse effect on security, or on the ability of the screening personnel to screen other passengers, it seems to fall outside of the general scope of the regulations, and so I suspect that the threat of a $10,000 civil penalty was not supported by law.

However, the reason I haven't been able to convince myself of the fact that a civil penalty couldn't have been imposed is that the relevant law is more than a little bit difficult to wade through, and the regs have previously been applied in ways that seem patently unjust. In terms of difficulty wading through the regs, I will give one example: 49 U.S.C. 46301(a)(5):

(A) An individual (except an airman serving as an airman) or small business concern is liable to the Government for a civil penalty of not more than $10,000 for violating—
(i) chapter 401 (except sections 40103 (a) and (d), 40105, 40106 (b), 40116, and 40117), section 44502 (b) or (c), chapter 447section 44502 (b) or (c), chapter 447 (except sections 44717–44723), or chapter 449 (except sections 44902, 44903 (d), 44904, and 44907–44909) of this title; or
(ii) a regulation prescribed or order issued under any provision to which clause (i) applies.

And that's just one example. As a lawyer, I can wade through that, cross checking sections, examining applicability to a given situation, etc. However, as a human being, I don't do that sort of thing for fun, and no one is paying me to write this blog. In terms of unjust application of the regs in the past, I refer readers to Rendon v. TSA an unhappy case where a civil fine imposed for asking some rather profane (but not unreasonable) questions about security procedures was upheld under the prohibition on interfering with screening personnel. While I think imposing a fine for trying to leave an airport is even worse than the situation in Rendon, given the result in Rendon, it wouldn't surprise me terribly if a fine, in fact, were imposed.

So what will happen in this particular case? Probably nothing. I doubt the TSA will seek penalties, given that the whole incident was video taped, and a trial would only lead to bad press and the possibility of their powers being curtailed. In the end, my guess is the whole thing will blow over, the TSA will keep their current security policies in place, and most people (e.g., me) who can't afford to skip flights just because we might not want to be molested by the TSA will end up being subjected to whatever form of invasive screening the TSA thinks is warranted without any realistic avenue for recourse.

I know I've written this post before

Here's the wired headline: Scribd Facebook Instant Personalization Is a Privacy Nightmare. The article is about what you'd expect. There are complaints about automatically generated spam emails to your automatically created friends and confusing or non-existent opportunities to opt out. There's a Scribd PR person explaining how privacy is really very important to the company. There's the author suggesting that one way to fix the problem is to delete your Scribd profile, but characterizing that as extreme. I'm not 100% sure why I read the article. True, I don't use Scribd, and have never run across this particular feature. However, just seeing Facebook in the title gave me a pretty good idea what to expect. Someone in marketing wants to take advantage of the tremendous amount of data on Facebook (and get in on the whole "social media" bandwagon) and so they make it really easy to share data, and relatively difficult not to so do.

So what should people do instead of this? Well, there's always the possibility of not integrating with Facebook. Frankly, regardless of what they've been forced to do by public pressure, I will always distrust a company who's CEO famously doesn't believe in privacy. In the event that you must integrate with Facebook, you could always try little things like opt in rather than opt out participation, not automatically spamming Facebook friends, and sending making sure it's clear for someone how to opt out if they decide they don't like the program. There are also guidelines for interactive and behavioral advertising put out by organizations like the FTC and the IAB (though I consider those to be a bit outside the scope of this post). Whatever you do though, if you're going to move into the world of social media, you need to do it with your eyes open, or your company is likely to be integrated with Facebook in a headline that also includes unpleasant words like "nightmare" or "disaster."

July/August Privacy Catch Up

So...the blog has been uncharacteristically quiet for the last month or so. This is not because nothing privacy related has happened in the legal world. For example, the FBI and federal prosecutors announced that they will not be filing criminal charges related to the Lower Merion Spy Cam Scandal (link here), something I wrote about hereas possibly being the creepiest privacy violation of 2009. Also, it turns out that the millimeter wave scanners used to see through clothes to catch those ever-elusive terrorists can store and transmit images, despite assurances from the TSA that that was not the case (link. In more positive news, the appeals court for the District of Columbia circuit has rejected a claim by the government that round the clock warrantless GPS surveillance is ok (article here). There was also some legislative action, as internet advertisers warned that a new privacy bill, the "best practices act" would "would turn the Internet from a fast-moving information highway to a slow-moving toll-road." Also, speaking of slow-moving toll-roads, Google and Verizon came together to formally announce that net neutrality (i.e., the concept that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally) is a rather quaint notion that shouldn't apply to wireless networks. All in all, it's been a relatively busy month or so.

So why no posts? Well, in addition to all of these privacy events, we also got a huge non-privacy decision - Bilski v. Kappos - which basically upended a decade's worth of precedent on whether you can get patents on novel software or business methods. Since software and business method patents are a big part of my practice, a good deal of the time that I would have spent on privacy was spent on patent stuff instead. To make matters worse, at least time-wise, I also got a copy of Starcraft II, which turned out to be a huge time suck. Happily, rather than releasing a full game, with three playable races and campaigns for each (the approach taken with the original), Blizzard decided to only release a human campaign, which turned out to be approximately a third of a game's worth of play for a full game's price. As a result, I not only get to get back to blogging sooner, I also get to know to avoid new releases from Blizzard in the future, which I guess means that everyone wins.

Why Do People Keep Thinking This is a Good Idea?

Earlier this month, Blizzard Entertainment (makers of World of Warcraft, among other successful computer games) decided that they would change their game forums from anonymous forums (i.e., you can't tell the identity of someone posting to the forums unless they tell you) to forums where comments are connected with a person's real name. After a firestorm of criticism (e.g., here) Blizzard spiked the program, at least for now. And the reason for going down this path, with its utterly predictable and embarrassing trajectory? Two words: Facebook Integration. Actually (as explained here) it's slightly more complicated than that, but what it boils down to is that Blizzard wanted to get in on some of that social networking magic, and giving everyone a single ID that was consistent across all of Blizzard's forums (and Facebook) seemed to be a good way to do it.

This is an old story, and one that often ends in class action lawsuits (e.g., Google Buzz, Facebook Beacon). Why do people keep doing this? My guess is because they see their existing user data as an asset, and they hate letting an asset go unexploited. However, that's the wrong mindset. The safest way to think of user data is as something that actually belongs to users, which they have allowed you to temporarily safeguard. The point of the user data isn't to exploit it, it's to allow a business to maintain its relationship with its users. If you want to integrate with Facebook - fine. However, the way to do so is going forward, collecting new data (with a clear explanation of what you're collecting the data for), and without degrading or changing the services provided for old users. True, at the outset, this seems much harder than leveraging an existing user base. On the other hand, many existing user bases don't like being leveraged, and going about things the hard way can take that into account, and avoid turning an existing base into a historical user base.

Tech Apologies of 2010

Wired put up an article on the biggest tech apologies so far this year (link). The list is:

• Google: Sorry about Buzz, Street View Privacy Issues (providing information to unwelcome Buzz "followers" and recording WiFi data while making Street View maps)
  


• Adobe Apologizes For Old Flash Bug (failing to patch bug for 16 months)
  


• McAfee’s Antivirus Snafu (releasing update that shut down computers running XP)
  


• AT&T Begs Pardon for iPad E-mail Breach (allowed hackers to identify email addresses of iPad customers through a flaw in an authentication web site)
  


• Facebook Apologizes for Privacy Shortcomings (Sort Of) (Mark Zuckerberg issues non-apology for constantly changing facebook privacy policies)
  


• Ellen Degeneres Didn’t Mean To Hurt Apple’s Feelings (Apparently, a comedian made fun of Apple...and this made the list why?)
  


• Apple: Sorry We Couldn’t Keep Up With iPhone 4 Orders (The description says it all)
  

Not separately counting the two separate Google apologies squished into the top bullet, that makes 3/7 apologies for privacy gaffes. The moral of the story - privacy mistakes are the gift that keeps on giving, at least in terms of bad publicity.