The difference between <code>private</code> and <code>protected</code> visibility is that child classes can see and use <code>protected</code> members, but they cannot see <code>private</code> ones. Since a <code>final</code> class will have no children, marking the members of a <code>final</code> class <code>protected</code> is confusingly pointless.

<h2>Noncompliant Code Example</h2>
<pre>
public final class MyFinalClass {

  protected String name = "Fred";  // Noncompliant
  protected void setName(String name) {  // Noncompliant
    // ...
  }
</pre>

<h2>Compliant Solution</h2>
<pre>
public final class MyFinalClass {

  private String name = "Fred";
  public void setName(String name) {
    // ...
  }
</pre>