years prior to that i was a professor at different university there newport sense and defendant newport sense and the professor opportunistic plane if i threw this lawsuit has an inside so what was the inside information that you brought to the authorities attention that was not available publicly the information bearable and publicly is that professor maria fan is a professor at the university of california outside consultant once a day once a week then they have to report their activity to the universe so what i want to focus on is what did you bring to mean for example someone can be what i call an internet sleuth where they can look at the internet and find little things and they can pass you gather a story that normally is not what we think of as whistleblower that's them on the outside looking at the internet to piece together some facts what did you bring or well at least what does that a second a minute complaint allege that you brought to the authorities attention that was not available on the internet or through for you what was the insider knowledge that you had during two pain your complaint doesn't say any of that i was it says that she was one hundred percent professor right and just somehow you know that it doesn't say whether she was on leave or not think you've been asked already once by judge aunts and already once by judge bers on i understand the nature of your complaint as to why i'm professor fang was doing something wrong that is to say she in your view she couldn't both b principal investigator and a full time professor that's not the question the question is well wasn't it public knowledge that she was a full time professor how is the how's the information that you're bringing here that she was a full time professor not already of publicly available information but even if she's a full time professor she if she was  many professors do that and i do yes but that's not my question and i understand if you're on leave of absence that's different or if you're on sabbatical that's different but my question is why is there not already public information that she's question that this i don't know that at the end engineering school but many medical schools people salaries are essentially paid by their grads yes right so i don't know what you know what it means to say she was hundred percent employed by the university of california they're employed by the university but their salaries are being paid by someone else so that's not clear either you haven't really accounted for that possibility she has a good position but she isn't getting paid that is different from what one would know from looking at the website and knowing that she is a professor at the university of california you say she is one hundred percent employed but that covers all kinds of things and could be her salaries being paid by somebody else it could mean she's only that could mean  an sabbatical so you haven't clarified anything as i admit that i didn't clarify that in my complaint but the school of engineering professors and nine succeed you need to show that the information as to whether mr vang professor vang was or was not on sabbatical you need to show that i was secret information correct i include that in the complaint no no i am asking a direct question and just i'm just asking the legal question in order for you to succeed as a relate or you must show that the information that mr professor fagging was not working what was was working full time around on sabbatical you need to show that that secret information make a telephone call to the university the university will have somewhere available as publicly available information what what preferences are teaching your professors are not teaching i mean i just don't see the you shawn that secret information in the sense that you need to family question just to be clear you know you're not trying to defend you against the question i just  appellant this appeal is about the public disclosure bar and that was the basis for the opinion of judge staton below granting our motion to dismiss the second amended complaint the third complain responses that there was a recognition that the burden of proving subject matter jurisdiction was on the plaintiff there were later in the case below so statements for example that the defendants should have put forward related really most interesting question in this case and the only one is is whether this is actually news media is that your contention that the for example the i gather let's leave aside the  government websites for both the department of transport or the department of transportation d o d and nest grants qualify under two categories under the statute for public disclosure i believe they're both i'd like some justification for ok because i must say that it's certainly not the original idea i presume was that you know anybody can just find this by reading the morning paper or going to some obvious place but the internet is sort of changed all that because i mean there is all kinds of stuff very on the internet but the notion of the government's going to be able to find it without somebody taking it out doesn't really c what the point of all this was to two thoughts in response to that one is i think it's worth going back to the the intent and what the supreme court has said about congress intent when it added the of the public disclosure bar because this isn't a case about an allegation being publicly disclosed it's a transaction was where the facts publicly disclosed in a way that would provide reasonable notice anything on the internet well how would you define i would certainly include it the the particular agencies that granted these contracts i mean the first place you would look if you were trying to figure out what had happened with these grants would be the agency grant less and any google search quite easily would have revealed that so this is not an obscure i think the final result most church one what's the limits i mean if if we i don't if we were to write an opinion since we don't have any along this what would we say was the limits of what is news media for purposes of using the internet be reasonable for a government enforcement authority to have been able to find the information i think that would be a test that would be easily met here but that kind of lifts off the page from the statute hundred eighty six there was no such thing but there were phones and if their work there were there were phones and there were print media what's what isn't what is today's i mean the new york times is as much an internet web site as it is a newspaper today if i can focus of narrowly for my purposes i'm going to assume for purposes of my question that the terms of the grant that's federal report the question then i ok that's what was in the grant she represents on the grant application and i assume that in the grant that's publicly available information as part of a government report that she says she's going to be the principal investigator the allegation is however that that's fraudulent because if she is a full time active professor not on sabbatical not on leave she can't be so the question is how do we know in something if it's within the statute that she is  full time professor who is not entitled to be the principal investigator so where are we finding that in a way that defeats the relator school and i think that goes to also to that to the point find it it's in the i mean it's in the websites of both the both of the universities and it's and and it's in the foyer responds well  well i mean somebody would have no reason to be favoring us now and the and and the i presume that first of all is the actual grant application on any public web site no right no that was only for the fact that she said that she was the principal and that distance from being a principal that itself is not in a website that is not a website that was in the foyer response ok so it's not so doesn't count right well no that counts as a government report an hundred different times it's yes a ploy responses are public disclosures but that's not news media that's a different category gets to the first category every court that has looked at it and there's no contrary in the government's possession correct and they've and they've actually taken the affirmative step of responding to a quest in the you know it's not just that it's fully a bowl that it could be i mean anything could be right that anything there are restrictions but but many many things could could be subject to foil that's not enough it has to be requested and produced and that's what happened and the website in this case is a government website yes well there are several but the university of  california irvine is a government institution that's correct and the website in question is the school's website well the with with the shit what they buy what the bio of the professor write any columbia university's that's not a public institution but that is a do you need from for for your purposes do you need the columbia website or is the irvine one sufficient there duplicate of each other the the only information that in the columbia website that is not in the irvine website is what happened subsequent in time her columbia position there was also i think that same information in the f c c filing which was also let me ask you this between her website a colombian website u c irvine because all the stuff about government is federal government not state that would be the question it would be reading the news media probably not the report that's my point so let me come back to my question ok is a web cites for the contrary which was a commercial website sort of private posting on the website that had been vetted by the website itself i think it was i could contribution to a c n n website professor and and that was repeated that she was she had been an associate professor a full professor and then a chance a professor the words full time or part time or sabbatical don't appear in any of the public disclosures but our view is that a government investigator with the standard of what could i reasonably infer from what's publicly available would be there's a requirement that you can't work more than the standard for you know there are three tiers of overview here and you know the first is whether or not the documents themselves were properly subject to judicial notice that's catalog as many universities did and in their catalog and said then said exactly the same thing about dr fang that the website says now with that people news media i think there would have been an open question if it had been the problem well the world is different the world has internet and i world has people who it's publicly available but i wouldn't call it news me neither but it but anybody who wants to can get that's not news media under the statute well i understood your question to be if you actually went to u c irvine and asked for asked for a copy of the cattle i guess that's not a question of how you got a question is the catalog newsmedia and i understood your answer to be no you don't have to stick with that answer of that's not your answer i think it was ok i understood the question is being a little more limited but ok well that was my question is the catalog newsmedia i think it would depend on how it had been distributed i think if it if it had been  that's an interesting statement i think the catalog if i think it's the equivalent of putting it up on a public bulletin board where people know they can go online and i think that would be that would be a public disclosure i think  media that's the issue but if i put up a hire the goodyear blimp to fly around with information on it if we were to read news media to mean literally new york times or l a times than anyone seeing that goodyear blimp with information could could file a claim i take it you know i think that i think that that would have been it interesting question i think if if goodyear provided a service where people could broadcast or airplane and i say go for over the rose bowl and we're going to stop i think that the limit should be a commonsense application of where you know back to my statement i made earlier which is what would the government if if given an opportunity to look at this information could reasonably infer and would it have been reasonable for the government to have found the information in the first place certainly information posted on the government's own websites would that would i think that's an easy case where you know applying that standard and other government website has the addition of reliability you're the government you've received an application from someone and due diligence put the person's name into any search engine you want doesn't have to be google it would pull up the u c irvine website and they and a government investigator could have easily found all the material facts that are alleged in the second amended complaint seems to me or drop your argument that news media means publicly broadcast i would i would agree with that i would do that if there are not restrictions and and it's i think that's the date and age we live in now that's that's not a one nine hundred eighty five but that is two thousand and eight i think  reason i am concerned that is because i mean in fact there is given the amount and depth of information that's available there is a profession of knowing how to use it and just people in general don't necessarily know how to find everything so nasty cut off somewhere and that's when i say i don't know whether there is and i think i think the case cited by the appellant gives a good example of where you might say that that's not reasonable to say like a forum where you don't where you don't have the indicia of reliability like where anybody can post and you don't know where it came from as opposed to and i think the far end of the spectrum here are the the actual federal agency websites that that disclose it and i think you know a university website where they you know there's  no potential reason to think why they would post something supporting the problem here is that we have a stand this explains why standard right so that the information doesn't have to be together in one place and wrong one place would be one thing but in order to figure this out you not only you have to look for something that you're not looking for first i e you have to decide for some reason to look at these particular   that says who these people are and then you have to make the requisite inferences so i understand that our case law seems to say that but it doesn't say in the context of you know to some entirely separate internet searches which is what is required here right i would say that there were you know if you were going to apply reasonable standard sort of reasonable diligence reasonable inference standard here there weren't that many dots to connect here and it wasn't that obscure but what you would have to do is say ok newport sensors has applied for even just one of the grants and just starting there are your views ok we see in that information we can see that maria fang professor was designated as the principal investigator and thanks to the internet and this is how things have changed now you can quite easily see on reliable website of the job doing the work of matching those things  allowing whistleblowers to come forward and reveal fraud based on significant information that they have and that is not publicly available versus parasitic lawsuits where it is reasonably available here it was reasonably  reasonably available information you're right i'm asking you to make the same interpretation that the vast majority of cases looking at websites have when they've looked at this news media question you're mr and we took you up to your time limit that we'd like to give you a chance to respond if you could the three minutes on the clock least news media did you ever argue that no ok because it's a you agree it's a government report yes ok it's a government report but the news media not everything hire an airplane to fly around with a banner that has the information that shows that someone is engaged in fragile behavior if i if my brother is in the stands watching the rose bowl and he sees that airplane could he then use that should report to based on information collected by right now i mean if i if i have the airplane flying over the stadium i pay for it i'm not news media and i put the information about about dr failing and they fly around the stadium and everyone sees the airplane in the stands not reported news media could they pick up their phone and call their lawyer and say hey file a claim for me right now because i saw the airplane that says mrs fang is a crook could everyone in that stadium do it because that airplane is not news media further let me be three so i never heard that kind of law in my life time well actually just doesn't mean that they go free it means that you as an outsider relate or