Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Hall, Bronwyn H.
Author-Email: bhall@merit.unu.edu 
Author-Workplace-Name: UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, Institute of Fiscal Studies,
	 University of California-Berkeley, and NBER
Title: Business and financial method patents, innovation, and policy
Abstract: 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.
Classification-JEL: G28, K2, L86, O34
Keywords: intellectual property, State Street, software, internet, business methods,
	 patents, innovation
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 2010
Number: 010
File-URL: http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/wppdf/2010/wp2010-010.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2010010