It's not uncommon for defense attorneys to complain, unfairly or fairly, about prosecutors defaming their clients in public statements outside the courtroom.

A ruling handed down by a federal appeals court Tuesday shows how hard it is to legally compel the government to run a correction.

The case in question stretches back six years to 2009 when a jury convicted former InterMune CEO W. Scott Harkonen of wire fraud for making allegedly false and misleading statements in a press release about the effectiveness of the biotech company's Actimmune drug in treating patients with a fatal lung disease.

Dr. Harkonen claims the Department of Justice's press release on the verdict contained reputation-damaging errors about the very press release that got him in legal trouble. (This case isn't short on irony.)

In court papers, Dr. Harkonen alleged that the Justice Department's press release falsely stated that he "lied to the public about the results of a clinical trial." To the contrary, he says, the government at trial repeatedly "conceded...that no test results were falsified, that the numbers in the press release were accurately stated, and that Dr. Harkonen was prosecuted solely for the conclusions drawn from those results."