Business Method (BM) Patents

A business method (BM) invention is a new business system or method that implements a business idea, such as a method of doing business, using information and communication technologies like computers and the internet.

A business idea alone cannot be patented. As an exception, however, a business method can be registered only when it is “a new business system implemented using information and communication technologies such as computers and the internet.”

So even for the same idea, whether a BM invention is registered and how broad its protection is after registration depend on how it is described in the specification and how the claims are structured.

In BM inventions, the technical content itself is often a combination of existing technologies. That makes finding the distinguishing features of the invention through a review of the prior art the most important task. INCUBE Patent & Law Firm carries out its own prior art search for every patent application, so we draft patents that are registrable without making the scope of protection unnecessarily narrow.

If you are preparing a BM patent, we suggest you work with INCUBE.