[EAS]Business Method Patents

[pjk]

Subject:   Business Method Patents

Patents have been commented on in these mailing before
http://www.yale.edu/engineering/eng-info/msg00762.html
http://www.yale.edu/engineering/eng-info/msg00683.html
but are going to stay in the spotlight as the nexus of
business intellectual property turmoil.  --PJK

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(from INNOVATION,  26 February 2001)

SURGE IN BUSINESS-METHOD PATENTS LEADS TO BLEAK HOUSE II
Comparing the growing trend in litigation over "business-method
patents" to  Bleak House, the Dickens classic in which lawyers
fight incessantly over a  disputed inheritance until they gobble it
all up in legal fees, author Seth  Shulman calls for the courts to
bring some sanity to the table.  "Business-method patents tend to
be so, well, 'fuzzy' they are difficult,  if not impossible, to
adjudicate," he writes. "Rather than affording a  limited monopoly
on a new, improved design for a mousetrap or vacuum  cleaner, as
patents are reasonably intended to do, method patents confer a 
monopoly on a broad concept -- the equivalent of inventing the idea
of  'catching mice with a trap' or 'using a suction device to clean
carpets.'"  Besides never-ending legal fees, these patents pose an
inherent danger of  quashing innovation -- in direct opposition to
the whole point of patents.  If companies face the potential for
legal action every time they implement  a business method, how many
will still be willing to invest in innovation?  ("Owning the
Future: IP's Bleak House," Technology Review Mar 2001) 
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/mar01/shulman.asp