Cite as: 511 U. S. 863 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
untouched here, both because Desktop has made no serious effort to defend the Court of Appeals' judgment on those points and because the failure to meet the third condition of the Cohen test, that the decision on an "important" question be "effectively unreviewable" upon final judgment, would in itself suffice to foreclose immediate appeal under § 1291.3 Turning to these dispositive factors, we conclude, despite Digital's position that it holds a "right not to stand trial" requiring protection by way of immediate appeal, that rights under private settlement agreements can be adequately vindicated on appeal from final judgment.
C
The roots of Digital's argument that the settlement with Desktop gave it a "right not to stand trial altogether" (and that such a right per se satisfies the third Cohen requirement) are readily traced to Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651 (1977), where we held that § 1291 entitles a criminal defendant to appeal an adverse ruling on a double jeopardy claim, without waiting for the conclusion of his trial. After holding the second Cohen requirement satisfied by the distinction between the former jeopardy claim and the question of guilt to be resolved at trial, we emphasized that the Fifth Amendment not only secures the right to be free from multi-sentations about when it first learned of Desktop's use of the trade name, was so "enmeshed in the factual and legal issues comprising the plaintiff's cause of action," 437 U. S., at 469 (internal quotation marks omitted), i. e., whether Digital (willfully) misappropriated the name, as to elude Cohen's second requirement for collateral order appeal. Indeed, it is possible that the District Court phrased its order here in equivocal terms precisely because it assumed that this lack of separability would preclude any immediate appeal under § 1291.
3 We have of course held that the Cohen requirements go to an appellate court's subject-matter jurisdiction, see Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U. S. 368, 379 (1981), and thus, were it necessary here, we would be obliged to assess whether each condition was met, without regard to whether the parties believe it to be satisfied.
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