Patent Baristas

Red Herring this week ran an interesting article about a company called PeopleConnect. Basically, PeopleConnect helps high-tech startups hire pricey executives without actually having to pay them any cash. Angel Employees, like Angel Investors, invest their labor in exchange for an equity stake in the company. The companies, meanwhile, get top notch management while keeping their burn rate low.

As the article states, this is for people who like the “idea of working without pay at a startup without revenue, funding, or even a fully formed business plan in exchange for what basically amounts to a lottery ticket.” It’s the chance to work for a small, high-growth tech company that could either go bankrupt or turn into the next Google.

The firm has 15 clients and looks to fill two or three positions for each client at any given time. Once the manager goes on payroll, PeopleConnect collects 25 percent of the first-year salary of the managers it places as a finder’s fee. It also negotiates for a certain percentage of the startup’s options when it closes a financing round and sets a company valuation, usually less than 1 percent.

In taking a look at the positions available, it’s no surprise that the majority of companies are in California huddled around Silicon Valley. But, I did see some openings in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. While this is not a completely new idea, of course (since founders have always done this), extending it to more employees could be the next big thing in tech employment.

I didn’t see any attorney positions but I think this could be a good way to hire in expensive legal talent. The only issue is that attorneys tend to be a quite risk-adverse lot.

Forbes recently ran an article showing that companies that generate revenue from products protected by copyrights or patents are vital to the U.S. economy. In a report, NBC Universal Chief Executive Bob Wright released the results of the study he commissioned, which shows that digital piracy, if not reined in, could cause the U.S. economy to stall.

The study, conducted by Washington, D.C.-based Economists Incorporated, found that U.S. intellectual property-oriented industries–from software firms to aerospace and pharmaceutical companies–are vital to the U.S. economy for the following five reasons:

• They contribute nearly 40% of the growth achieved by all U.S. private industry and nearly 60% of the growth of U.S. exportable products and services.
• Ten-year gross domestic product estimates would be about 30% lower than current projections without the contributions of these industries.
• These industries are responsible for 20% of the total U.S. private-industry contribution to gross domestic product, and 40% of the contribution of U.S. exportable products to gross domestic product.
• These industries are among the nation’s highest-paying employers, with 18 million workers earning 40% more than all U.S. workers.
• The core copyright industries, such as music and filmed entertainment, in 2003 contributed $33 billion in net export revenue, while the patent-dependent aerospace industry reported another $32 billion in export revenue during the same period.

The report shows that the protection of intellectual property is critical to the economy and that it’s not just these companies who are benefiting.

Note, however, that the profits on all that intellectual property may not be staying in the U.S. As reported this week in the Wall Street Journal, many high-tech, intellectual property-driven companies have set up tax-shielding subsidiaries in Ireland to get out of paying taxes here at home.

One such subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. helps cut at least $500 million off U.S. taxes. The subsidiary, called Round Island One, provides a structure for Microsoft to reduce its corporate taxes in the U.S. as well as much of Europe. U.S. companies whose products are heavily based on their innovations, such as technology and pharmaceutical firms, are setting up units in Ireland that route intellectual property and its financial gains to the low-tax location — at the expense of the U.S. Treasury.

Much of the of the subsidiaries’ income is licensing fees from intellectual property, e.g., copyrighted software code that originates in the U.S. Some of the rights to these lucrative assets end up in Ireland via complex accounting rules on intellectual property that the Treasury is now seeking to overhaul.

Microsoft’s effective world-wide tax rate plunged to 26 percent in its last fiscal year from 33 percent the year before. Nearly half of the drop was due to “foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” Microsoft told the Securities and Exchange Commission in an August filing. Microsoft leaves much of its profit in Ireland, including $4.1 billion in cash, avoiding U.S. corporate income taxes.

A common device is to take successful, patented American ideas and then develop new generations of them — with help from an offshore research division. The ownership of the new version (and profits on licensing it) can then legally be shared between the U.S. parent company and the offshore unit.

U.S. law explicitly permits this practice. The controversy comes in valuing the contribution made by the offshore unit. Did it pay a fair share of the development cost? And did it pay a reasonable price to the parent company to be able to share the rights to the original invention, i.e., a price an arm’s-length party would pay?

The concern, of course, is that companies rely on the U.S. education system and other tax-supported infrastructure to produce a creative work force, and then move the fruits of that labor abroad without paying their dues.

More here.

Andrew Raff at the IPTAblog reports on news, analysis and commentary about issues in IP, technology and privacy law and related topics. This week, he brings you an excellent round-up of law blogs for Blawg Review #31. In Act III: Internet and IP, Raff describes this past weeks highlights in IP including a post by the Patent Prospector on Coffee Beer. Yes, these two words that should never be uttered together in the same sentence are the description of a product that Nestec, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestlé, has filed patents on.

There is also a note on Opinionistas – a blog on lawyer life that was in an opinion piece in the Sunday Times (Blogging the Firm). This is yet another anonymous blog written ostensibly by an associate at a big, prestigious law firm in Manhattan billing some outrageous number of hours – if we are to believe it. Excuse me if I yawn but these seem to be a dime-a-dozen lately.

I want to give her (him?) the benefit of the doubt but, as the Times notes, she plans to write a fictional novel based on the characters in Opinionistas. Coincidentally. This seems a little too familiar after the Anonymous Lawyer was discovered to be a law student making everything up and not a Big Firm Hiring Partner. Like the Hot Abercrombie Chick hoax, people often have a desire to post a fictional life.

If true, I feel sorry for her but I have to wonder why anyone would willing put up with such a poor work environment. Life’s too short.

No, this post is not about the NFL or NBA, but if I’d titled it the Probabilistics Of Reverse Payment Hatch-Waxman Settlements, then you would have stopped before reading this far.

Suits for antitrust relief based on settlements, in which pharmaceutical patent owners settled and paid makers of generics to delay entering the market, recently have been causes lost by the FTC and private plaintiffs. One recent case, FTC v. Schering, may be reviewed by the Supreme Court, since they asked the Solicitor General for a brief on the matter. The likelihood of review by the high court is greater still, due to an arguable conflict between the 11th Circuit ruling in that Schering case and the 6th Circuit in the Cardizem case, as to whether a per se rule or other analysis should apply to the alleged anticompetitive effect of “reverse payment” settlements. The 6th Circuit found it “per se illegal for a pioneer drug company to pay money to a generic manufacturer in return for a commitment to delay entry” in the Cardizem CD Antitrust Litigation, 332 F.3d 896, 908 (6th Cir. 2003). The 11th Circuit found “that neither the rule of reason not the per se analysis is appropriate in this context” in Schering-Plough Corp. v. FTC, 402 F.3d 1056, 1065 (11th Cir. 2005).

By way of background, the FTC charged that settlement payments for delaying entry of a generic were per se anticompetitive. The “essence of the complaint is that the pioneer paid the generics not to compete for a period of time, which could be per se illegal.” FTC Commission, op, pg. 12. The ALJ agreed with the FTC’s charge, based on extensive evidence from economists. The FTC Commissioners disagreed with the per se analysis, yet concluded that the settlement was anticompetitive, and then, the 11th Circuit reversed the Commissioners. I think it was Truman who said that his administration needed a one-armed economist, one who would never qualify his conclusions with the remark, “but, on the other hand.” In sum, the votes were: the FTC, the ALJ, the 6th Circuit, and many private plaintiffs claim these settlements are illegal restraints, while the FTC Commissioners, the 11th Circuit and some district courts say not, but they say no for conflicting reasons.

I put aside some of the per se tediousness of their rulings, which ask whether settlement of a pharmaceutical patent suit between a patentee and a potential generics competitor can be monopolistic, so that I can focus instead on a few simple chestnuts. Settlements are good, and our adjudicative systems favor them – right? Agreements are the product of compromise, and being sued for agreeing to a compromise would be bad – right? When patent owners settle with accused infringers, patentees pay the infringers – what?

Schering paid “$60 million to Upsher [and] $30 million to ESI.” 402 F.3d at 1062. In Cardizem, the patentee guaranteed “$ 10 million per quarter, [to] refrain from marketing its generic version of Cardizem.” 332 F.3d at 907. Payments in the Cipro case were not less than “approximately $398 million.” 363 F. Supp. 3d at 519. In each case, economists gave expert opinion as to what consumers lost by the delay in generics entering the market, the incentives to settle or litigate a patent case and the risks and costs of those choices, and the presence or absence of market power within a market of disputed scope.

Several modes of analysis are used in these court decisions. As with all antitrust cases, the defendant needs to avoid a per se legal standard. When the alternative, the rule of reason, is applied then both sides engage grandly in a battle of economists, who estimate the impacts of the challenged agreement. A scenario added in a patent antitrust case is where the Chancellor guides the mighty sword that divides the realms of evil monopolism from that of a bona fide patent monopoly.

The potentially decisive turns taken in these cases begin once it is known if the settlement is per se inimical to competition, and if not, then a rule of reason analysis will encompass the subjective intent behind the settlement terms and the objective indicia of adverse effects. (Bayer expected “to lose …between $510 million and $826 million in Cipro sales in the first two years of generic competition …[and] estimated Bayer’s losses due to a potential adverse judgment in the `444 Patent litigation at $1.679 billion net present value.”

A significant and overarching principle is that agreed restrictions in the settlement, which impair competition no more than the exclusionary scope of the patent grant, are presumptively legal. “Patent owners should not be a worse position, by virtue of the patent right, to negotiate and settle” suits, Schering, at 1072; and do “the challenged agreements restrict competition beyond the exclusionary effects” of the patent. Id., at 1068.

Generally, if the patent law allows the restrictions in the settlement agreement, such as exclusion from market entry or increased prices due to a royalty, then it should avoid antitrust liability. On the other hand (to quote Truman’s economists), when the settlement terms exceed a patentee’s rights to restrict competitive activity, then it will fact greater antitrust scrutiny.

In the Cardizem decision, the settlement kept the generic competitor Andrx from relinquishing its “first-filer” status under Hatch-Waxman, which “delayed the entry of other generic competitors, who could not enter until the expiration of Andrx’s 180-day period of marketing exclusivity …[and this] was, at its core, a horizontal agreement to eliminate competition.” Cardizem, at 907-08. This agreed restriction, which postponed the market entry of all generics, exploited the Hatch-Waxman protocols and, was outside the scope of the right granted to the patentee to exclude. The settlement in Schering had no equivalent effect.

The matter of “market power” is perhaps the factor least clarified, especially when a patent covers only claimed embodiments of a pharmaceutical, and not everything in the entire market. An example in one case was a patent only for the time-release coating, and not the active ingredient under it. In another, the molecule in the patented composition was present in non-infringing substitutes. The clarity in case law on the market power of a patentee is apparent in the Federal Circuit cases string-cited on page 12 of its recent Medimmune v. Genentech decision, “it is not presumed that” the patent confers “market power” but, “there is a presumption of market power in patent tying cases,” and consider too, that where a ”plaintiff can demonstrate an actual adverse effect on competition ..there is no need to show market power in addition.” FTC v. Ind. Fed’n of Dentists, 476 U.S. 447, 460-61 (1986). These statements suggest that “market power” is one factor that makes the patent a “probabilistic” property right in these reverse-payment antitrust cases. See, fn. 9 to FTC’s petition for certiorari in the Schering case.

Last, these reverse payment settlement cases put in doubt the “presumption” of anticompetitive effect that the FTC wished to apply when it could not obtain a per se standard of liability. That presumption would attach where the settlement sum did not represent “legitimate consideration” for the rights exchanged, and where a generic maker receives “anything of value and agrees to defer its own [R&D], production or sales activities” and where the sum paid as “litigation costs” exceeded $2 million. The Schering case applied the substantial evidence test and concluded that each offered reason was not a basis for the claimed presumption, and after that de novo review the 11th Circuit vacated the FTC’s cease and desist order.

In closing, imagine a patent challenged because, “at the time of invention,” a “hypothetical person” of skill would know to combine or not know how to enable the patent’s elements; then, based on a “hypothetical negotiation,” you believe that the “future profits” stream would be affected by a factor of X, and that your “litigation risk” assessment is that the challenger has a 39% chance of invalidating the patent, so you agree to a reverse payment settlement, pay the challenger a sum in the range of 23 to 26% of anticipated, future loss revenue; but, a later antitrust suit claims that objective, economic opinion shows that the potential impact of the settlement is harmful to the market and to consumers, who demand disgorgement of “treble” damages. To some patent professionals, that’s just another day at the office. We may see if the Supreme Court treats it that way.

Today’s post comes from Guest Barista C. Lee Thomason, a registered patent attorney and IP litigator at Frost Brown Todd’s Louisville office.

While the Panexa web advertising includes all the relevant drug interaction details, including safety information for squirrels, this parody doesn’t seem too far off the mark in today’s direct-to-consumer drug advertising.

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether it should revisit its policy on direct-to-consumer ads and will take comments on the issue through the end of February. In 1997, it relaxed restrictions on broadcast and print ads, which led to a marketing explosion. Pharmaceutical companies now spend an estimated $4 billion a year promoting products this way on TV and radio, in print, and on the Internet.

One driver in this is the earlier recall of the arthritis drug Vioxx because of dangerous cardiac side effects – a medication heavily promoted directly to consumers. Merck & Co. spent up to $160 million annually on Vioxx ads, and sales of the drug skyrocketed, often to people who may not have needed to take it.

In August, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) said its members would voluntarily delay broadcast ads for new products for six months, among other new restrictions. The policy does not apply to print ads. Earlier in the year, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist proposed a moratorium on direct-to-consumer advertising – a move estimated could cost the industry as much as $10 billion if it ever comes to fruition. Many believe drug makers have too much influence over physicians and patients. While direct-to-consumer advertising can educate patients without inflating need, evidence suggests that direct-to-consumer advertising has unwittingly led to inappropriate prescribing, which can compromise patient safety and care.

Representatives of Consumers Union and the National Consumers League said all ads should be cleared by the FDA before they are broadcast or printed. Currently, ads only have to be submitted sometime during a campaign. In 2004, 586 TV ads and 52,848 other types of promotions were submitted to the agency. Consumer groups also called for more information on both risks and benefits of drugs that are marketed this way.

But drug makers defended the ads, saying they have motivated people to seek a doctor’s help. J. Patrick Kelly, president of Pfizer U.S. Pharmaceuticals, said that 65 million people have talked to a doctor as a result of ads, and that 29 million had discussed a condition for the first time. Pfizer will wait six months before advertising a new drug, and will be running more consumer-friendly descriptions of drug risks in print ads, Kelly added.

AstraZeneca, the company responsible for “the purple pill,” said that all such ads should be submitted to the FDA for review before they run.

But just remember: There are no known medical circumstances (based on extensive internal testing) in which PANEXA cannot be used!

More here.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a case relating to subject matter issues under 35 U.S.C. §101 for a patent that allegedly claims “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas” in Laboratory Corp. of America v. Metabolite Laboratories, U.S., No. 04-607, 10/31/05. Review was granted only with respect to question 3 in the petition:

Whether a method patent setting forth an indefinite, undescribed, and non-enabling step directing a party simply to “correlat[e]” results can validly claim a monopoly over a basic scientific relationship used in medical treatment such that any doctor necessarily infringes the patent merely by thinking about the relationship after looking at a test result.

The United States District Court trial jury found that Laboratory Corporation (LabCorp) indirectly infringed Metabolite Laboratories, Inc.’s (Metabolite’s) U.S. Patent No. 4,940,658 (the ’658 patent). The jury also found that LabCorp partially breached its contract with Metabolite.

The ’658 patent claims methods for detecting cobalamin or folate deficiency. Cobalamin and folate are both B vitamins, commonly known as B12 and folic acid, respectively. A deficiency in these vitamins can cause serious illnesses in humans, including vascular disease, cognitive dysfunction, birth defects and cancer. If detected early enough, however, vitamin supplements readily treat the deficiency.

Because these B vitamins assist in metabolizing the amino acid homocysteine, scientists directly assayed homocysteine to screen for cobalamin and folate deficiency. These direct homocysteine assays were unreliable. Then researchers at University Patents Inc. (UPI) discovered a relationship between elevated levels of total homocysteine and a deficiency in either cobalamin or folate. The total homocysteine test, however, could not alone identify which vitamin was deficient. Total homocysteine includes free and protein-complexed homocysteine and also includes homocysteine derivatives homocystine and homocysteine-cysteine.

Originally, doctors could not conveniently treat both deficiencies because while folate was available in tablet form, cobalamin could only be administered by injection. After cobalamin became available in tablet form, however, doctors could simply order a total homocysteine test and, without identifying the deficient vitamin, treat elevated levels of total homocysteine with a tablet containing both cobalamin and folate. The UPI inventors also developed a test to identify the deficient vitamin using methylmalonic acid (the panel test method). The ’658 patent claims both the total homocysteine test and the total homocysteine-methylmalonic acid test. Claim 13 claims the total homocysteine test:

13. A method for detecting a deficiency of cobalamin or folate in warmblooded animals comprising the steps of: assaying a body fluid for an elevated level of total homocysteine; and correlating an elevated level of total homocysteine in said body fluid with a deficiency of cobalamin or folate.

On appeal, LabCorp argued that claim 13’s correlating step should be construed as establishing that an elevated level of homocysteine is caused by a “shortage of cobalamin which causes a hematologic or neuropsychiatric abnormality,” or a “deficiency of folate which causes a hematologic abnormality.” LabCorp interprets the specification to clearly define a “deficiency of cobalamin” as the presence of a clinical or hematologic syndrome or both that responds to cyano-cobalamin treatment, and to acknowledge that some clinical or hematologic syndrome or neuropsychiatric abnormality must be present. Thus, LabCorp contends that the correlation step of claim 13 should be construed to require a showing of a separate hematologic or neuropsychiatric symptom to confirm the “correlation.”

The claim states that the method must correlate “an elevated level of total homocysteine . . . with a deficiency of cobalamin or folate.” This language does not require a further association between the level of total homocysteine and either a hematologic or neuropyschiatric abnormality or both. The claim only requires association of homocysteine levels with vitamin deficiencies. It requires no further correlation to confirm the relationship to vitamin deficiencies. The claim simply says nothing about a confirmatory step or a further correlation beyond the stated relationship.

On appeal to the CAFC, LabCorp argued that claim 13 is invalid on grounds of indefiniteness, lack of written description and enablement, anticipation, and obviousness. Likewise, LabCorp contends that claim 18, directed to the panel test, is also invalid on grounds of indefiniteness, and lack of written description and enablement.

First, LabCorp contends that the “correlating” step in claim 13 is indefinite. 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, provides: “The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.” The CAFC affirmed the trial court’s denial of JMOL.

In its petition, Laboratory Corp. argued that the standard of intent to induce applied by the Federal Circuit is so low that a defendant becomes an inducer by merely delivering to doctors factual information about the correlation of elevated homocysteine levels and vitamin deficiency. According to the brief, a truthful statement of medical fact alone cannot under any circumstances constitute a specific intent to infringe a patent. It added that scientific facts and laws of nature are outside the scope of patentable inventions, citing Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981).

The Supreme Court invited the government to brief on the following question:

Respondent’s patent claims a method for detecting a form of vitamin B deficiency, which focuses upon a correlation in the human body between elevated levels of certain amino acids and deficient levels of vitamin B. The method consists of the following: First, measure the level of the relevant amino acids using any device, whether the device is, or is not, patented; second, notice whether the amino acid level is elevated and, if so, conclude that a vitamin B deficiency exists. Is the patent invalid because one cannot patent “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas”? Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 185 (1981).

The PTO contends that the record in this case is not sufficiently developed to answer particular fact questions to make the Section 101 determination under Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1978), and Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981). Those questions are whether the claimed invention transforms matter and whether it prevents all practical applications of the natural phenomenon. According to the PTO, the courts below did not construe the claim term “assay,” which can suggest a variety of ways in which a product is transformed and made no finding as to the practical applications of the natural phenomenon preempted by the claim.

The government’s brief conceded that the claim in question involves a natural relationship but states that this is only the beginning of the Section 101 analysis. A claim involving a natural phenomenon must transform an article to a different state. Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1978). Moreover, the claim as a whole must contain some inventive aspect other than the natural phenomenon itself, and must not prevent all practical applications of the natural phenomenon. On the other hand, Diehr stated that patentable subject matter includes everything under the sun made by man, and that the novelty of an invention is of no relevance in determining whether the subject matter of the claim is within Section 101.

See the Federal Circuit decision here.

The recent decision, about a backbone stabilizing device, in Cross Medical Prods. v. Medtronic Sofamor Danek, 424 F.3d 1293 (Fed. Cir. 2005), may be a reminder why so many commentators have weighed in on the need to reform the Patent Act, or to reign in judicially-created rules.

The panel decision in Cross Medical works out on the rebuttable presumptions for and against imposing a “means” construction on claims, the yielding “doctrine” of claim differentiation, that extrinsic “marking estoppel” cannot contradict intrinsic interpretative evidence, then “refer[ing] to the dictionary” first to determine ordinary meaning, and also, ruling as a MOL what one of ordinary skill would have understood “from the context of” the specification, but that whether “a set screw is equivalent to an external nut” cannot be decided “as a matter of law,” and noting that an infringer’s later admission of interchangeability is “irrelevant to known interchangeability” at the time of invention. The Federal Circuit has fathered all of these presumptions and doctrines and tools for ruling, and applies them decisively. However, these rules of decision have little of no basis in the patent statute.

The two aspects of the Cross Medical case, infringement and obviousness, should be read by clients and patent attorneys who have medical device patents and applications.

The ruling of no direct infringement results from including the “bone” in the claim for the bone “fixation device.” Without the presence of the “bone” in the accused infringing device, no direct infringement occurs until it is implanted. “Because Medtronic does not itself make an apparatus with the ‘interface’ portion in contact with bone, Medtronic does not directly infringe.” The issue then turns to inducement to infringe and to contributory infringement, but again, one essential element of those is direct infringement. In addition, proof of ‘knowingly” inducing and of “no substantial non-infringing use” must be presented to sustain those charges.

Putting aside the correctness of the non-infringement ruling, you can find a fair number of recently-issued patents for medical devices (which I’ll leave unidentified) that claim the “bone” or the “tissue” that the medical devices acts upon, even though many patents follow the better practice of mentioning, but not claiming, the “bone” itself, e.g., US Pat. 6,342,055. As we were taught early on – don’t include the “work piece” in what is claimed. To do so may prevent a finding of direct infringement and relegate to the case to the common-law doctrine of inducing or contributing to infringements.

Obviousness may be the next battleground in the patent law, in part due to the certiorari petition in KSR Int’l v. Teleflex, which makes well-supported arguments that the Federal Circuit requirement for clear and convincing proof of a “motivation or suggestion” to combine prior art references has no basis in the law.

The decision in Cross Medical applies a lower standard, and bases its ruling on the principle that the “motivation to combine” may be “implicit” in the skill of one skilled in the art, and that it can come from one’s knowledge of the problem to be solved, or of a different problem. “One of ordinary skill in the art need not see the identical problem addressed in a prior art reference to be motivated to apply its teachings.” Perhaps I fail to grasp the logic of these statements about what can prove obvious combinations. Instead, the ruling may cut against patents in crowded fields of art, such as medical devices, where each advance is engendered from highly-skilled persons “knowledge of the problem to be solved.” The absence of a proven “motivation or suggestion” in the prior art often is essential to medical devices that claim am advantageous combination of known elements

In the coming year, patent practitioners will hear about reforms to the patent act, which are intended to make for “better” patents and for more predictable patent rulings, and may hear too from the Supreme Court about the long-standing, but non-statutory, test for obviousness. Perhaps some development in those areas may help in the future to cut down the issues in a case like Cross Medical.

Today’s post comes from Guest Barista C. Lee Thomason, a registered patent attorney and IP litigator at Frost Brown Todd’s Louisville office.

The Baristas are out today at BioOhio 2005 but I wanted to leave a Monday morning note about Blawg Review #30. Denise Howell over at Bag and Baggage wrote a terrific Halloween-themed review that shouldn’t be missed.

We’re just wanting to mention a posting by Ernie Svenson (a/k/a Ernie the Attorney – searching for truth & justice in an unjust world). Ernie, coping with the clean-up in the City of New Orleans, has WiFi service that allows friends to sit on the front porch and connect. It begs the question, why don’t state/local governments provide this given it’s essential nature to modern life? Why, indeed.