I would like to get a list of all the business method patents approved
in the last 5 years. Please provide me with a source where I can get
it for free or for a small fee.
Please be specific about the web site address because just saying
uspto.gov is not enough as I could not find a way in that site to
distinguish between millions of other patents and business patents.
Once again, I only need a list of business patents
approved in the last 5 years along with the patent number of each of
them so that I can track them in the GOVT. website.

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Request for Question Clarification by easterangel-ga on 15 Jul 2003 05:44 PDT

Hi! I was able to extract a 5 year business related links from the
USPTO website. Most of the links refer to Information technology in
business, would it be ok to include this as well? Would you consider
this as a legitimate answer?

Thanks!

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Clarification of Question by kazi67-ga on 15 Jul 2003 06:54 PDT

hi,
thanks for your effort. I am interested in the patents which are about
ways of doing business in a novel way. It can involve high tech
equipments in the process but the equipments themselves should not be
all the inventor has to claim. For example, priceline.com has a patent
which describes the process to buy and sell airline tickets using the
internet. Even though they use information technology products in
describing their patent, but they do not claim rights to any of the
products used, such as internet or computer. They claim right to the
specific method of conducting business using those products. So, in a
nutshell, I am not interested in any high tech products or software,
NOTHING THAT CAN BE BUILT OR CODED OR SEEN. If at least one of the
claims is a way or METHOD of doing the business that is what I want.
Even though I understand many companies combine some software with
their business method, that is alright as long as they have a novel
way of conducting business that they are claiming at the same time. I
recommend you go to the following website to get some more info on
business method patents.

http://www.nolo.com/lawcenter/ency/article.cfm/objectID/C2DBFF26-7097-4B7B-AE36DA00499851EE

http://digitalenterprise.org/ip/patented_models.html
( here the one patented by netflix is one of the least technical and
more methodical, in other words more ideal business method patent)


If the list you have also includes the patents that do not have any
new way of doing business but just some new technical discoveries, I
am afraid I don't need that at this time.
Thank you again for your interest. I hope you can help me out with
this.

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Request for Question Clarification by easterangel-ga on 15 Jul 2003 07:07 PDT

Hi again! 

The list I found seems to have some of the patents you have in mind
but the entries are in the thousands so it will be quite an ardous
task of digging each one of them.

In the meantime, I will open this question so that other researchers
maybe able to provide a more practical solution.

Thanks!

Hello!

I remember reading an article a few months ago, which mentioned that
all business methods are either classified with a distinct
classification or assigned to a specific art unit (for review). If you
can locate this article and extract the classification or art unit
number, this would be the best way to find such business method
patents i.e. search for the CCL (Current US Classification) or the Art
unit that they are assigned to.

However, I must add that searching by group/Art Unit does not seem to
be facilitated right now.

These are my first comments to a question on Google. Do let me know if
this was useful.

SKT

Thanks SKT for the useful hint. Even though I have not been able to
get what I needed but I surely got a new way to search for it. I am
happy that I tried google as it gave me a chance to get in touch with
people like you.

I got the classification no. it's 705. Thanks everyone for the help.