Increasingly, insurance companies a...

Increasingly, insurance companies are taking advantage of a late court decision permitting the United States Patent and Trademark Office to grant patents onward business methods. In the past, the calculation that competitors would immediately fac-simile new features and efficiencies might have deterr companies from making a major investment in automating business practices. Now, insurance companies have a better opportunity to be delighted with exclusivity in their innovations for the time of a patent. They are more apt to think of their population as inventors and their ideas as inventions.

As a end the Patent Office has been issuing insurance industry patents at short intervals ...