The closest thing is a patent. These so-called business method patents aren't even sketchable, like the inventions of the phonograph or the telephone. Examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are swamped. The agency has just 38 people considering applications for business method patents, which doubled last year to nearly 2,700. This year's total could reach 6,000 - 65 percent of which are likely to be approved.
Competition spurs trend.
The frenzied pace of technological innovation and an extremely competitive Internet marketplace are behind the surge. Dozens of software developers and dot-com executives could be developing similar business methods simultaneously, so securing a patent can be the key to survival. A case involving British Telecom ups the ante even further. It asserts a monopoly over a basic underpinning of the Internet. After a trawl through its intellectual property portfolio, British Telecom found it had a U.S. patent on hyperlinks, which allow users to click from one Web page to another.