The ABA Law Journal recently published an article about patenting legal strategies. The article, by Steve Seidenberg, was published in the May edition and it titled Crisis Pending: Can a Patent on Legal Strategy Prevent a Client From Taking Your Advice? The Courts May Soon Decide.
For retirement plans, an idea crops up and pretty soon it becomes common – such as cross-tested profit sharing plans using individual classification. Or think about the first guy who came up with an age-weighted design in his plan document. With the Pension Protection Act creating so many possibilities for hybrid plan designs, I thought it would be fun to check the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
The U.S. PTO has a handy tool which permits searching existing patents as well as pending applications for certain terms. Using that tool, I did a quick search of issued patents using the search term “ERISA” and found 36 patents. A quick review of those patents found most of them involved some type of computer-implemented data-processing method, and were not just pure plan designs.
A quick search of patent applications using the search term “ERISA” found 92 applications. One of the applications, Pub. App. No. 20070055605 filed August 28, 2006, involves cash balance plan designs. A quick search of “cash balance” and “defined benefit” found 9 pending applications. A quick search of “Pension Protection Act” only finds two applications, which is disappointing while at the same time simply reflects the probable inevitability of the designs. [tags]Pension Protection Act, defined benefit, cash balance, hybrid plan, plan design, patent, pension, ppa[/tags]
