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Business method patent
Business method patents are a class of patents which disclose and claim new methods of doing business. This includes new types of e-commerce, insurance, banking and tax compliance etc. Business method patents are a relatively new species of patent and there have been several reviews investigating the appropriateness of patenting business methods. Nonetheless, they have become important assets for both independent inventors and major corporations.
In general, inventions are eligible for patent protection if they pass the tests of patentability: patentable subject matter, novelty, inventive step or non-obviousness, and industrial applicability (or utility).
A business method may be defined as "a method of operating any aspect of an economic enterprise".
On January 7, 1791, the French revolutionary National Constituent Assembly passed a patent law that stated that "Any new discovery or invention, in all types of industry, is owned by its author". Inventors paid a fee depending upon the desired term of the patent (5, 10, 15 years), filed a description of the invention and were granted a patent. There was no preexamination. Validity was determined in courts. 14 out of 48 of the initial patents were for financial inventions. In June 1792, for example, a patent was issued to inventor F. P. Dousset for a type of tontine in combination with a lottery. These patents raised concerns and were banned and declared invalid in an amendment to the law passed in 1792.
In Britain, a patent was issued in 1778 to John Knox for a "[p]lan for assurances on lives of persons from 10 to 80 years of age". At this time in British law, patents could only be issued for manufactured objects, not manufacturing processes.[citation needed]
Patents have been granted in the United States on methods for doing business since the US patent system was established in 1790. The first financial patent was granted on March 19, 1799, to Jacob Perkins of Massachusetts for an invention for "Detecting Counterfeit Notes". All details of Perkins' invention, which presumably was a device or process in the printing art, were lost in the great Patent Office fire of 1836. Its existence is only known from other sources.
The first financial patent for which any detailed written description survives was to a printing method entitled "A Mode of Preventing Counterfeiting" granted to John Kneass on April 28, 1815. The first fifty years of the U.S. Patent Office saw the granting of forty-one financial patents in the arts of bank notes (2 patents), bills of credit (1), bills of exchange (1), check blanks (4); detecting and preventing counterfeiting (10), coin counting (1), interest calculation tables (5), and lotteries (17).
On the other hand, cases such as Hotel Security Checking Co. v. Lorraine Co., 160 F. 467 (2d Cir. 1908), which held that a bookkeeping system to prevent embezzlement by waiters was unpatentable, were often read to imply a "business method exception", in which business methods are unpatentable. Another such case was Joseph E. Seagram & Sons v. Marzell, 180 F.2d 26 (D.C. Cir. 1950), in which the court held that a patent on "blind testing" whiskey blends for consumer preferences would be "a serious restraint upon the advance of science and industry" and therefore should be refused.
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Business method patent AI simulator
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Business method patent
Business method patents are a class of patents which disclose and claim new methods of doing business. This includes new types of e-commerce, insurance, banking and tax compliance etc. Business method patents are a relatively new species of patent and there have been several reviews investigating the appropriateness of patenting business methods. Nonetheless, they have become important assets for both independent inventors and major corporations.
In general, inventions are eligible for patent protection if they pass the tests of patentability: patentable subject matter, novelty, inventive step or non-obviousness, and industrial applicability (or utility).
A business method may be defined as "a method of operating any aspect of an economic enterprise".
On January 7, 1791, the French revolutionary National Constituent Assembly passed a patent law that stated that "Any new discovery or invention, in all types of industry, is owned by its author". Inventors paid a fee depending upon the desired term of the patent (5, 10, 15 years), filed a description of the invention and were granted a patent. There was no preexamination. Validity was determined in courts. 14 out of 48 of the initial patents were for financial inventions. In June 1792, for example, a patent was issued to inventor F. P. Dousset for a type of tontine in combination with a lottery. These patents raised concerns and were banned and declared invalid in an amendment to the law passed in 1792.
In Britain, a patent was issued in 1778 to John Knox for a "[p]lan for assurances on lives of persons from 10 to 80 years of age". At this time in British law, patents could only be issued for manufactured objects, not manufacturing processes.[citation needed]
Patents have been granted in the United States on methods for doing business since the US patent system was established in 1790. The first financial patent was granted on March 19, 1799, to Jacob Perkins of Massachusetts for an invention for "Detecting Counterfeit Notes". All details of Perkins' invention, which presumably was a device or process in the printing art, were lost in the great Patent Office fire of 1836. Its existence is only known from other sources.
The first financial patent for which any detailed written description survives was to a printing method entitled "A Mode of Preventing Counterfeiting" granted to John Kneass on April 28, 1815. The first fifty years of the U.S. Patent Office saw the granting of forty-one financial patents in the arts of bank notes (2 patents), bills of credit (1), bills of exchange (1), check blanks (4); detecting and preventing counterfeiting (10), coin counting (1), interest calculation tables (5), and lotteries (17).
On the other hand, cases such as Hotel Security Checking Co. v. Lorraine Co., 160 F. 467 (2d Cir. 1908), which held that a bookkeeping system to prevent embezzlement by waiters was unpatentable, were often read to imply a "business method exception", in which business methods are unpatentable. Another such case was Joseph E. Seagram & Sons v. Marzell, 180 F.2d 26 (D.C. Cir. 1950), in which the court held that a patent on "blind testing" whiskey blends for consumer preferences would be "a serious restraint upon the advance of science and industry" and therefore should be refused.