Law360, New York (October 17, 2008) -- In 1998, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), which held that there was no per se exclusion of business methods from patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. §101. Afterwards, a flood of “business method” patent applications were filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, so much so that Patent Office formed a unique classification for business method-related patents (Class 705) and have 9 technical art units examining business method patents.
After an annual peak of 8,700 patent applications in 2001, the number of applications in Class 705 has been failing off each year since....
