Business method patents are invention patents that are part of the larger family of utility patents. Classified as a process because there is no physical object, any company that develops a new way of conducting business or manufacturing can protect the method.

Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line is a historic example of a business method. A More modern one would be Amazon's 1-Click method of e-commerce. The method allows a repeat customer to bypass address and credit card data entry forms, because Amazon can access that information directly from the customer's account. Amazon was granted a patent on this business method in September 1999 (U.S. Pat No. 5,960,411).

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