A reader sent this in:As you quote from Bank of America et al. Bilski amicus brief:
"To the contrary, methods of doing business - and even inventive
means of hedging risks, accounting or structuring financial
relationships - have existed since the earliest days of the
Patent Act and went for decades without the type of protection
Appellants and other similarly situated applicants seek."
Wrong. It only took a few decades after the Founding Fathers for
such business method patents to issued. Take a look at U.S. Patent
1700 from 1840, "Improvement in the Mathematical Operation of
Drawing Lottery-Schemes". It appears that financial innovators
have always sought patent protection on their inventions.
How about Bank of America funding a study to see how many business method
patents were issued in the 1800s, so Seth Waxman can argue with some
actual facts?
