Business Method Patents Research Articles

Keeping abreast of technology-driven business model evolution: a dynamic patent analysis approach

All firms that depend on technology for their competitive positions recognise that keeping abreast of technology-driven business model evolution is of vital importance. However, previous studies cannot offer a concrete way of profiling trends owing to the lack of quantitative data and systematic processes. We propose a dynamic patent analysis that can identify complex relationships among business method patents and visualise trends in technology-driven business model evolution. At the heart of the suggested approach is morphological analysis (MA) for structuring different types of business models at a technological attribute level and modified formal concept analysis (FCA) for investigating technological changes in business models over time. A case study of business method patents concerning electronic shopping is presented to show the feasibility of the proposed approach. We believe our method can promote consensus-building on up-to-date trends in technology-driven business model evolution, serving as a starting point for a more general model.

United States v Business Method Patents: Trial by Trial and Error

United States v Business Method Patents: Trial by Trial and Error

The development of business method patenting in the logistics industry - insights from the case of intelligent sensor networks

Business method patents represent a new and very serious challenge for technology management in the logistics industry, in particular for internationally operating companies. To provide some case-related insight into this field, we intend to analyse the utilisation of such patents in the context of intelligent sensor networks. We are going to develop several hypotheses and propose a workflow-based approach to patent analysis, comprising 1 the systematic analysis of a business process 2 the use of its functions for the identification of relevant patent documents. One major finding is that relatively few logistics companies are active in this patent field. Accordingly – and this can be regarded as a challenge, which might apply to other industries as well – technology management in the analysed field has to balance between using inventions that are patented by its suppliers and subcontractors and patenting business methods of its own. If the latter is neglected, it might miss a major opportunity to deal with asymmetries in the international patent system, gain advantages and secure its companies’ freedom to operate.

Evidentiary Problems of Multidisciplinarity in the Litigation of Business Method Patents

It is now widely accepted that judicial decision making is not a neutral exercise in interpretation of established law and consequently decisions, particularly in novel areas, should take account of policy considerations. In this article I use the example of litigation over the patentability of business method to problematize this line of reasoning. Sound policy typically turns on empirical evidence and while there is a significant body of research on the question of whether business method patents promote innovation, such evidence has been introduced only indirectly, though academic articles. This does not allow adequate examination of the reliability of the evidence. Introducing empirical social science evidence directly in litigation faces a number of hurdles which are discussed. Ultimately I argue that it is beyond the institutional competence of the courts to adequately take account of empirical social science evidence on the issue of whether business method patents are good for innovation. While the details of the arguments are specific to the context of business method patents, I suggest that the issue of institutional competence should always be taken into account when considering whether empirical social science evidence should drive judicial decision making.

In re Stepan Co., No. 2010-1261 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 5, 2011)

Biotechnology Law ReportVol. 31, No. 1 DocumentsIn re Stepan Co., No. 2010-1261 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 5, 2011)Published Online:9 Mar 2012https://doi.org/10.1089/blr.2012.9996AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byA Tale of Seven Districts: Understanding the Past, Present, and Future of Patent Filings to Form Stronger Patent Venue Jurisprudence under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a)SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 589The Case Against Product Configuration Trade DressSSRN Electronic JournalExperts, Generalists, Laypeople -- and the Federal CircuitSSRN Electronic JournalInsurance Fraud, Agency, and Opportunism: False Swearing in Insurance ClaimsSSRN Electronic JournalWhat's in, and What's Out: How IP's Boundary Rules Shape InnovationSSRN Electronic JournalResolving Eligibility and Indefiniteness in Proper Context: Applying Alice and AristocratSSRN Electronic JournalExamining SuccessSSRN Electronic JournalSubjecting Software Subject-Matter to Limitations that MatterSSRN Electronic JournalIf You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em? How Sitting by Designation Affects Judicial BehaviorSSRN Electronic JournalThe Federal Circuit's New Obviousness Jurisprudence: An Empirical StudySSRN Electronic JournalThe Promise of the Patent in Canada and Around the WorldSSRN Electronic JournalPoliticizing Patents - Patenting Biotechnology in the Wake of Section 33, Prometheus, and CLS BankSSRN Electronic JournalSoftware Patents and the Return of Functional ClaimingSSRN Electronic JournalTen Years of Inter Partes Patent Reexamination Appeals: An Empirical ViewSSRN Electronic JournalWhose Rules Rule? Federal Circuit Review of Divergent USPTO and District Court DecisionsSSRN Electronic JournalWeeds and Seeds in the Supreme Court's Business Method Patents Decision: New Directions for Regulating Patent ScopeSSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 26The Stochastic Relationship Between Patents and AntitrustSSRN Electronic JournalImproving the Federal Circuit's Approach to Choice of Law for Procedural Matters in Patent CasesSSRN Electronic JournalIntellectual Property Protection and Agricultural Biotechnology A Multidisciplinary PerspectiveSSRN Electronic Journal Volume 31Issue 1Feb 2012 InformationCopyright 2012, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.To cite this article:In re Stepan Co., No. 2010-1261 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 5, 2011).Biotechnology Law Report.Feb 2012.87-90.http://doi.org/10.1089/blr.2012.9996Published in Volume: 31 Issue 1: March 9, 2012Online Ahead of Print:January 6, 2012PDF download

Recent Research on the Economics of Patents

This review surveys recent research on the economics of patents. The topics covered include theoretical and empirical evidence on patents as incentives for innovation, the effectiveness of patents for invention disclosure, patent valuation, and the design of patent systems. We also look at some current policy areas, including software and business method patents, university patenting, and the growth in patent litigation.

Business Method Patents Revisited: Recent Developments in the Protection of Computer Implemented Business Methods in the U.S. - Between the Promotion of Innovation and Protection of Investments?

Criticisms against business method patents (BMPs) are almost exclusively directed at the quality of BMPs. It is viewed that many BMPs amount to no more than patents on known brick and mortar commercial techniques merely performed through the computer or on the internet e-commerce platform thus obvious. Although recent economic findings seem to suggest that BMPs and even software patents play a very little role in actually promoting technological innovation in the sciences and the arts, these findings have not conclusively established whether BMPs in particular actually hinder innovation or act as bottlenecks to competition. This paper discusses the current state of affairs regarding U.S. BMPs and seeks to establish from a vantage of hindsight, whether previous calls to abolish business methods from the scope of patentable subject matter under § 101 of the U.S. Patent Act have any merit in light of recent developments.

Business method patent strategy portfolios; analysis of the Japanese main information providers

Focusing on the business method patent (BMP) field, this paper is investigating the intellectual property strategies of individual information companies using application and registration data between 2000 and 2005. Utilising the authors’ specially developed relational database regarding patent records, this research makes an in-depth analysis of the tendencies in applications and registrations related to 1 the BMP field 2 individual companies. To quantify the features of each dataset, this paper introduces the ‘portfolio strategy of BMP’ concept, and illustrates the prioritised fields regarding to applications and registrations and the gaps between them. As a result, this research has discovered that the main players that have been aggressively applying and obtaining patents are the major companies related to the information and telecommunication fields. Also, the authors have clarified the companies’ priority fields concerning applications and registrations, and shed light on the features regarding the consistency of each firm’s intellectual property strategies by using the ‘BMP strategy portfolio’ analytical method.

Another Bilski Letdown: It’s All Dicta

Bilksi v. Kappos, 130 S. Ct. 3218 (2010), the U.S. Supreme Court's long awaited and much analyzed opinions on the patentability of business methods, has a serious but little noticed shortcoming in its lengthy text. All of the Justices agreed that the invention is not patentable because it is an abstract idea; the discussion of business methods is therefore completely dicta.

Business Method Patent & Computer-Related Inventions Patents in India

Today technology is changing expeditiously. New technical inventions are taking place in huge number. These new inventions open new field of subject-matter for protection under Intellectual Property Law. Intellectual Property law gives an umbrella protection to new inventors. Patent provide protection for those line of process, products which are novel and are capable of proving that it involves an inventive step. USPTO grants maximum patents in a year. The paper written here advocates the invalidity of Business Method patent in Indian scenario. Business method today is capable of IP protection in countries like USA, Australia, Japan and New Zealand. India is against granting of protection to Business Method. India which amended its Patent Act 1970 recently, through an ordinance, to bring it in line with TRIPS agreement would not have helped the Indian software industry in anyway and would have only paved the way for the foreign companies to block the technology by playing with the words.

More than Just an Algorithm: Reconciling the Necessity for the Business Method's Disaggregation, with Bilski's Abstract Test

The conflation of software and financial algorithm innovation into a single classification is unsustainable with their respective cultures.The article examines the necessity for the disaggregation of the business method patent. The article provides a brief overview of the business method's judicial history and evolution as well as the pragmatic application of the Abstract test in a disaggregated business method classification.

Reviewing Business Method Patents (BMPs): A Strategic Asset For Companies And Inventors

Ever since the State Street Bank decision by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, BMPs have been validated as patentable subject matter and as a consequence have become a point of discussion and debate among professionals in the industry. Along with this, criticism for the validity and advantages of BMPs has also increased, especially in the wake of some Bad Patents granted by the USPTO immediately after the State Street Decision. This paper contradicts this opinion and tries to reinforce the significance and advantages of awarding BMPs to companies in todays global marketplace. BMPs are here to stay. Some fine tuning of its rules and regulations over time might make them more beneficial and efficient; however, it is definite that implementation and use of BMPs is sound policy. The necessary groundwork is laid by conducting a review of the various topics involved while dealing with BMPs including, history, example cases, advantages, legal requirements and procedures, and international aspects among others. This paper should be used as a comprehensive review for conducting an introductory research on BMPs. An interested researcher can look at the USPTO website on BMPs for more detailed and specific information pertaining to various aspects of BMPs.

Harmony and Diversity in Global Patent Law

The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of a broad movement to harmonize patent laws across nation-states. The most recent, and most significant, manifestation of this movement is the 1994 TRIPS Agreement, which requires signatory nations to adopt uniform rules on many major issues of patent law. The TRIPS Agreement has now been implemented by well over one hundred countries, including almost all major industrial nations, and it heralds a new level of international uniformity in patent law. This Article, while acknowledging the value of some harmonization of national law , explores the possible costs of the harmonization movement. Patent law itself owes its very birth not to harmony but to diversity of national law. The fifteenth-century Venetian patent statute was an experiment in law and a departure from the classical hostility to monopoly. Throughout the history of patent law, individual nations have varied their law and practice, and the results of these experiments have strengthened and improved patent practice. Diversity and experimentation continue today. As case studies of such experimentation, this Article examines business method patents and law governing the experimental use defense to patent infringement, an area in which both commentators and nations have split as to the proper approach for the law. This Article concludes that the patent law of the twenty-first century would be enriched if national and international policymakers learn to value variety.

Patenting Intangible Methods: Revisiting Benson (1972) After Bilksi (2010)

The 2010 Bilski decision on business method patents and intangible methods expressly relies on a trilogy of cases, Benson (1972), Flook (1978), and Diehr (1981). In light of that reliance, it is important to review the 1972 Benson decision in its technogical, industrial and legal context. Benson ruled that a presumptively novel algorithm on number conversion useful for computer programming was unpatentable. It postulated without analysis or factual support that algorithms were ideas. It then ruled that the claims in question were unpatentable because they covered all practical applications of the algorithm (idea). This Essay shows that Benson was driven not by any sound policy analysis but rather by an anti-patent bias prevalent in the 1960's and 1970's and by the interests of the then-dominant computer hardware company (IBM), which were opposed to creation of an independent software industry.

Weeds and Seeds in the Supreme Court's Business Method Patents Decision: New Directions for Regulating Patent Scope

In the 2010 Bilski decision, the Supreme Court visited the garden of doctrines on patent-eligible subject matter, a garden delineated in statutory terms by Section 101 of the Patent Act. The Court rejected categorical approaches, such as an enshrinement of a machine-ortransformation test as the sole measure for a patentable “process,” or a ban on business-method patents, but it affirmed rejection of the patent claims in question, which concerned commodities trading hedging transactions, as drawn to an abstract idea. Unfortunately, in Bilski, the Court passed on an opportunity to pull some doctrinal weeds that have been proliferating in the garden for years. But the Court also planted seeds for the growth of a more rational approach to regulating patent scope, one that is both consistent with the established doctrinal structure of the patent system and sufficiently limiting of overreaching patent claims to intangible processes, business methods, and natural phenomena. Critical to development of a better approach to Section 101 patenteligible subject matter is the need to recognize a distinction between two inquiries: (1) has an inventor made and disclosed a new and useful patentable invention?; and (2) what is the appropriate scope of protection for the patentable invention? Both inquiries can and should be conducted using established and well-understood doctrinal tools, which unlike the Section 101 patent-eligible subject matter tool used by the Court in Bilski, entail full consideration of the facts surrounding an alleged invention. Used with appropriate vigor, this fact-based approach can effectively screen out virtually all claims to putative “inventions” that are, on analysis, only abstract ideas or natural phenomena, and all claims that preempt subject matter that is old, not practically useful or beyond what the patent applicant has actually invented. There rarely would be an occasion to reach a Section 101 abstract-idea challenge, as was pressed upon the Court in Bilski.

US Patent Eligibility in the Wake of Bilski v Kappos: “Business as Usual” in an Age of New Technologies?

THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES the recent US Supreme Court decision in Bilski v Kappos. Although specifically applicable to the patentability of business methods, this seminal decision has consequences for determining patentable subject matter in various technologies. Focusing ultimately on Bilski's implications for the patentability of biopharmaceutical inventions, this paper first provides a broad chronological overview of the complex history of the judicial debate over patent eligibility under US law. It is followed by a brief discussion of the outcome and impact of the more restrictive Federal Circuit decision in In re Bilski, now abrogated by the Supreme Court. Here, a majority of the Federal Circuit judges misinterpreted Supreme Court precedent to hold that the machine-or-transformation (MOT) test was the universal and exclusive means for deciding patent eligibility for all process claims, implicitly including claims on biotechnological processes. Next, we carefully describe and analyze the Supreme Court decision rejecting this rigid application of the MOT test and allowing more flexibility in the eligibility assessment. The analysis includes general considerations, as well as a detailed discussion of the decision's potential implications for biotechnology inventions. In that context, we also refer to the most recent post-Bilski developments at the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and in the US courts. Acknowledging the criticism concerning overly broad patent claims and referring briefly to parallel developments in Europe, this paper finally highlights the effects of heightened thresholds for other patentability requirements. Considering those developments and realizing that it appears impossible to achieve static legal certainty in high-technology patenting without risking technological progress, the authors generally welcome the Supreme Court decision. Yet it is also recognized that crucial questions remain unresolved and that lower courts are now tasked with articulating a reasonably coherent eligibility doctrine with identifiable and plausible principles.

Drawing a Line in the Patent Subject Matter Sands: Does Europe Provide a Solution to the Business Method and Software Patent Problem?

In 2010 the Supreme Court decision in Bilski v. Kappos had the potential to completely rewrite patent subject-matter law for business methods and computer-related inventions. Earlier, the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal delivered a decision on the same subject matter that had the potential to produce similar change in Europe. Yet, neither decision from the two highest judicial bodies with jurisdiction over patent law in the United States and Europe provided more than incremental change. Our research explains why patent systems on both side of the Atlantic are unable or unwilling to produce comprehensive subject matter reform for business methods and software. There are few jurisprudential or policy imperatives for any currently proposed approach. We argue that the U.S. Supreme Court, together with the CAFC, by recognizing the true nature of invention can craft a solution and reinvigorating previous decisions, can provide an approach that enhances efficiency without stifling innovation that patent systems are most effective at promoting.

Business Method Patents: A General Overview on the Patentability in Comparative Jurisdictions: US, UK and India

With the increase in the complexity of trade and commerce, there has been a huge indulgence of the entrepreneur’s mind in creating newer and valuable intellectual properties to avoid the normal competition prevailing in the market. This has rather led to the birth of vivid varieties of intellectual works. This can be said only in the literal sense as to classify them as intellectual property, which indeed is a legal term, one has to see whether that particular work generated out of the intellectual labor is covered under the aegis of the law.Business Method Patents are per se not new to the patent law as the earliest business method patents granted goes back to the 18th Century1 yet they have not been recognized in many jurisdictions to be patent eligible. The reasons are manifold for instance a business method may not qualify either for either of the test of patentability on the basis of patentable subject matter (new invention/ new discovery/ new use), novelty, inventive step or non-obviousness and industrial applicability or utility.However, the reality is that business method patents can be granted depending upon the claims represented in the application and the way in which the invention is projected. Moreover, today most of the business method patent applications are related to computers and are covered under computer-implemented inventions; the general problem is to classify them and to understand them to be of what category of patent- a process or a machine?There are other problems also associated with business method patents and that is of economic nature. It is a well recognized practice that generally methods of doing businesses are not inventions per se and therefore, cannot be patented but the involvement of external knowledge i.e. the combination of two or more disciplines that leads to the applicability of the method may make it unique and unprecedented; similarly involvement of technology would also result into the same.

Patenting Tax Strategies: Controversial Subject Matter

An observer has noted: “the successful patenting of tax strategies now limits Congress’ ability to shape economic policy through legislation and places that power in the hand of individual patent holders.” It is unlikely that Congress could have intended such a possible result; and, it is equally unlikely that Congress intended to allow tax patents that can undermine the equal application and administration of tax law. Given these growing concerns, Congress should carefully observe recent developments in the area of tax strategy patents and determine if generally applicable patent standards are sufficient to deal with the unique problems that this particular group of patents presents.In Part II, this paper will examine the rationale underlying patents and will discuss the requirements for obtaining this legal status. Part III will detail the progeny of the “business method patent” in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. and will examine some patents falling within this grouping. Part IV will set forth the views of groups acutely affected by tax patents and examine actions they have taken in this area of the law. Part V will explore recent legislative developments regarding tax strategy patents and will argue their effectiveness in balancing the goals of patent and tax law. Part VI will examine new precedent in the area of “business method patents” set by In Re Bilski and will explain how it shapes the patentability of tax strategies going forward.

Business Method Patents and Sustained Competitive Advantage

In this study, the performance of 40 U.S. firms that own business method patents was compared with the performance of their matched sample nonpatenting competitors in order to explore patent-protected IS-enabled sustained competitive advantage. The ownership of these patents was not found to be a significant contributor to sustained competitive advantage when measured by financial and market share performance. However, the results can be used to guide much needed future research on this topic.