Business and financial method patents, innovation, and policy
Bronwyn Hall
#2010-010
Two court decisions in the 1990s are widely viewed as having opened the
door to a flood of business method and financial patents at the US
Patent and Trademark Office, and to have also impacted other patent
offices around the world. A number of scholars, both legal and economic,
have critiqued both the quality of these patents and the decisions
themselves. This paper reviews the history of business method and
financial patents briefly and then explores what economists know about
the relationship between the patent system and innovation, in order to
draw some tentative conclusions about their likely impact. It concludes
by finding some consensus in the literature about the problems
associated with this particular expansion of patentable subject matter,
highlighting the remaining areas of disagreement, and reviewing the
various policy recommendations.
Keywords: intellectual property, State Street, software, internet;
business methods, patents, innovation
JEL No. G28,K2,L86,O34
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872