TABLE OF CONTENTS Another exclusion from patentability in the UK and Europe is a scheme, rule or method for doing business . When Merrill Lynch applied to protect a system for trading in market securities by setting values in a computer for buy and sell , it was held that there was no technical result. To date, the UK authorities have held firm, but in the USA such inventions are patentable. There are hundreds of business method patent applications pending in the EPO, which may develop a more lenient view.
Until the mid-1990s, there were few applications in this field in any country. Then in the USA a small company, Signature, was granted a patent for a computer-controlled financial system under which investment funds were pooled. This gives the advantage of scale but the fine detail of the changes in value must be recorded for tax purposes and the system allowed this by a hub and spoke arrangement. A much larger firm, State Street Bank, challenged the patent, won in the first court but lost on appeal. The appeal decision sent the message that business methods, if novel and not obvious, were patentable in the USA. At about the same date amazon.com patented its one-click technology for Internet shopping. By allowing shoppers to enter payment and delivery details with one click, the percentage of abandoned orders was markedly reduced. Aggressive approaches for licence fees followed in this and similar cases.
A practical issue for the authorities and for...
