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[GRS Research]

Capital One received a patent on the management of an account's penalty fees, essentially generating a secondary account for the fees which in turn will have its own interest rate and will be credited first with any payments.  I know there are several patents on sub-accounts, parent-child accounts, etc. but this does appear novel focusing on the card issuer's fees and setting different account parameters.  Any thoughts?

Full story and background at www.BestModeBlog.com

[JimIvey]

I had just a few observations....

First, I'll take some small exception to the subject of the posted topic.  Not sure why novelty and profit should be considered exclusive alternatives.  Generally, true novelties, truly non-obvious ones, are often profit centers.  Economics 101 teaches that competition in selling commodities pushes profits down.  Bringing something to the marketplace that is not a commodity but is instead novel can give rise to more than a small but reasonable profit.

Second, no claim ever recites "essentially" anything.  I see that you acknowledge that there is something in the claims that doesn't seem clearly anticipated, and I appreciate the acknowledgment that the claims really do recite something other than the summarized "essence."  So much of the current public outcry against so-called overly broad patents inevitably begins with an unreasonable over-simplification of the claimed subject matter.  Yes, if one were to dumb-down the claims to no more than accounts and sub-accounts, the claimed invention would lack novelty.  Fortunately, as you note, the applicant took the trouble to include a bunch of other words in the claims -- words that presumably matter. 

Having thumped my chest in protest of the heap of FUD popular media seems to be feeding the public lately, I did notice something rather note-worthy about the claims -- They seem to have met exactly the opposite outcome of the claims of Bilski.  In particular, they look like they might be what the Office would consider computer-implemented subject matter not implemented in a computer. 

Incidentally, I'm still waiting for someone to show me a computer-implemented invention that is not implemented in a computer.

Regards.

[MYK]

Having thumped my chest in protest of the heap of FUD popular media seems to be feeding the public lately, I did notice something rather note-worthy about the claims -- They seem to have met exactly the opposite outcome of the claims of Bilski.  In particular, they look like they might be what the Office would consider computer-implemented subject matter not implemented in a computer. 

Incidentally, I'm still waiting for someone to show me a computer-implemented invention that is not implemented in a computer.

http://classes.design.ucla.edu/Spring08/152BC/votingmachine/

[Wolfcastle]

For those of you interested, here is claim 1 of the Capital One patent:

1. A method for managing a financial account, comprising:

          providing a payment plan offer to a customer associated with a financial account, the financial account comprising a first segment with a balance including at least one penalty fee;
          receiving a response from the customer indicating acceptance of the offer; creating, based on the response from the customer, a second segment associated with financial account;
          applying the at least one penalty fee to a balance of the second segment and removing the at least one penalty fee from the balance of the first segment; and
          monitoring payment activity associated with the financial account during a predetermined time period, wherein the monitoring further includes:

          applying payments from the customer to the balance of the second segment until the balance is equal to zero; and
          crediting subsequent payments associated with the financial account to the balance of the first segment.

[GRS Research]

...Not sure why novelty and profit should be considered exclusive alternatives....

Jim, I agree, it is certainly not an either/or situation.  My poorly worded subject relates more to the tone of my BestModeBlog.com posting; discussing the defense of penalty fees as a compensation for risk as opposed to the profit center it is. I further cited two background articles that researched two aspects of penalty fees, 1) whether paying penalty fees correlates to greater risk or more mistakes on the part of the consumer, and 2) the apparent penalty fee learning curve of new card users.

[Isaac]

For those of you interested, here is claim 1 of the Capital One patent:

1. A method for managing a financial account, comprising:

Interesting.  I believe that under the standards the PTO advocated to the federal circuit in In re Bilski, this claim would not recite patentable subject matter, and the PTO has instructed its examiners to apply those standards.  Hopefully we'll get an answer from the CAFC next month.

Further, this claim looks a lot like some of the claims rejected in In re Comiskey (absent some of the non 101 issues of the Comiskey claims).