Business Methods
| Number | Comments | Other family members | Earliest filing date |
|---|---|---|---|
| US 5193056 | This patent was at the center of a US Federal Circuit judgment in 1998 which confirmed that business methods implemented on a computer are patentable in the US since they produced a "useful, concrete and tangible result". The claims of the corresponding European patent application were rejected by the European Patent Office (EPO) as relating to unpatentable subject matter. | EP application 0575519 | |
| US 5960411 | Amazon.com sued Barnes & Noble for violating its "One click buy" but the case was ultimately settled. Amazon has so far failed to obtain a similar patent in Europe. | EP application 1134680 | |
| GB application 2388937 | Although granted in several non-European countries, the patent application was refused as relating to excluded subject matter under UK law as being a method of doing business and a program for a computer as such. The case law developed in refusing this patent application forms the basis for the current practice of the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) when deciding whether to grant patent applications involving excluded subject matter such as computer programs. The EPO have refused to search for prior art that might be relevant to the corresponding European patent application, stating that such a search would serve no useful purpose since the application solves no technical problem. | EP application 1346304 AU 759130B NZ 526345 SA 20034644 |
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| US 7013284 | Accenture sued Guidewire Software in December 2007, alleging their infringement of this insurance technology patent. Accenture alleged that Guidewire infringed the US patent protecting an insurance claims management technology that Accenture developed and licenses to the insurance industry. Intellectual property suits are not common in the insurance software market and this suit may represent a new front in the intellectual property wars according to one analyst. |
Read more about this topic: List Of Software Patents
Famous quotes related to business methods:
“I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)