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Dissertation
Immaterialgüter- und Wettbewerbsrecht

The Patentability of Financial Products

Two of the most pressing issues in financial regulation are systemic risk and the increasing complexity of the financial markets. This project focuses on business method patents and on their potential role in decreasing complexity in financial markets through disclosure. The study makes use of both legal and economic analysis.

Last Update: 23.01.15

In the years leading up to the 2007-2009 crisis, financial innovation in the banking sector – such as securitization, extensive re-use of collateral and the increased use of derivative instruments – enabled credit institutions to disperse their risks to the capital markets and beyond. Financial innovation was one of the elements contributing to the recent financial crisis, since through innovation financial operators built a more complex system, where regulation avoidance became easier. In some cases, said complexity aimed also at slowing competitors that would otherwise instantly imitate the new financial products.

This project focuses on business method patents and on their potential role in decreasing complexity in financial markets through disclosure.

Exclusive protection in the form of patents is generally necessary wherever market mechanisms alone cannot provide incentives to innovate. In recent years, legal theories have been complemented by economic research, which now offers a large amount of literature on IP law legitimation and design. The thesis of financial contracts patentability remains probably hard to endorse, given that methods for doing business “as such” are not patent eligible under Art. 52(2)(c) and (3) EPC. However, with respect to whether financial products should be patent eligible, from an economic perspective one of the research questions could be: is there something distinct about the financial industry that supports the argument that patents should be unavailable for financial innovation, as opposed to other industries where patents are accepted tools for economic growth?

The research investigates the state of the art on business method patentability in the EU and the US, and analyzes the consistency of current trends with the general system of IPRs protection.

The study aims at giving an assessment of intellectual property rights protection in the financial sector and eventually at proposing policy recommendation in light of a “Law and Economics” analysis.

Persons

Doctoral Student

Marco Bellia

Supervisor

Dr. Roberto Romandini

Doctoral Supervisor

Prof. Dr. Gustavo Olivieri

Main Areas of Research

Anreizsysteme