Legal Requirements for Getting a Business Method Patent

In order to qualify for patent protection, a business method or software must meet four requirements:

• The method or software must fall within the classes of patentable subject matter. Anything that is created by humans falls within these classes; laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas do not.
• The method or software must be useful. This requirement is fairly easy to satisfy because any functional purpose will suffice. A business need only demonstrate that its method or software provides some concrete tangible result. For example, the Amazon 1-Click patent provides a tangible result -- an expedited purchase.
• The method or software must be novel. This requirement means the method must have an aspect that is different in some way from all previous knowledge and inventions. This requirement is discussed in more detail below.
• The method or software must be nonobvious, meaning that someone who has ordinary skill in the specific technology could not easily think of it. This, too, is discussed just below.

Novelty

An Internet method will flunk the novelty test if it was put to public use -- or described in a published document -- more than one year before the patent application for the business method was filed. (If the method is exposed to the public in one of these ways, it loses its novelty.) For this reason, a business that is seeking to acquire a patent must research the "prior art" (previous inventions or methods) and promptly file its patent application or it risks losing valuable patent rights.

Nonobviousness

Meeting the nonobviousness test turns on whether the method provides a result that would be new or unexpected to someone with ordinary skill in the field of the business. Or put another way, if the differences between the business method and the prior art would not have been an obvious development to someone in the field, it is probably nonobvious.