The Orlando Sentinel reports that prescription info is now off-limits for data-mining firms:

A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation law restricting drug-company access to some information about doctors’ prescription-writing habits.

The ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston overturns a lower-court decision that said the confidentiality law unconstitutionally infringed on free speech.

Among other things, drug-company sales representatives use the information to target particular doctors and tailor their sales pitches. Patients’ names are not included in the data.