On Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:38:28 -0800, jim bell said:

At 04:53 PM 10/17/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote:

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--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:03:34 +0800 From: James Lee <jlee@ccl.itri.org.tw> Reply-To: jlee@ccl.itri.org.tw +----------------------------------------------------+ Addressed to: set-discuss@commerce.net +----------------------------------------------------+

I heard that CitiBank has filed for a patent in Japan with 140+ claims

The document is on my desk: CitiBank's patent in Japan #: Toku-Kou-Hei 7-111723 o 104 claims o published date: 29 Nov, 1995 o 112 pages (text: 48 pages, fig.: 64 pages.) # Note: # "Toku" means "Tokkyo", "tokkyo" == "patent" # "Kou" means "Koukoku", "koukoku" == "published" # "Hei" means "Heisei", "Heisei" is the Japanese year- # name; This year == Heisei 8 == 1996. A publication of the CitiBank's patent was a big news in industrial or financial domain in Japan. I found the article on Nikkei-Sangyo shinbun. # sangyo == industrial # shinbun == paper

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covering many aspects of electronic commerce, security electronic transaction, etc.

Probably yes.

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--- end forwarded text

Maybe Japanese law is different, but don't I recall reading somewhere that "methods of doing business," business practices in general, are not patentable?

It seems that "Toku-Kou-Hei 7-111723" claims specified procedure, not *general* "methods of doing business".

Not that it would surprise me if the Patent Office idiots were to change their minds, like they did concerning software, algorithms, and mathematics in general...

I think that Japanese P.O. has changed their policy in a few years influenced with U.S.P.O. ///hayashi