TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hall,Bronwyn H.
TI  - Business and Financial Method Patents, Innovation, and Policy
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14868
PY  - 2009
Y2  - April 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14868
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14868.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Bronwyn H. Hall
Dept. of Economics
549 Evans Hall
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/642-3878
Fax: 510/548-5561
E-Mail: bhhall@nber.org
AB  - 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.
ER  -