The author uses intuition derived from several of his research papers to make three points. First, in the absence of a common law balancing test, application of uniform patentability criteria favors some industries over others. Policymakers must decide the optimal tradeoff across industries....

A decade after the State Street decision, more than 1,000 business method patents are granted each year. Yet only one in ten is obtained by a financial institution. Most business method patents are also software patents. Have these patents increased innovation in financial services? To address...