Business Method Patents are legal means of providing protection and exclusive ownership rights to individuals or companies for their business processes, product or service that are mostly implemented by computers.

In the US, (which understandably is the pioneer in recognizing such patents, and has evolved laws and other legal framework for granting patent rights and their subsequent protection) these patents are classified under Class 705 - Modern Business Data Processing. This patent class encompasses recent e-commerce concepts, but a few hundred financial patents have been granted since the first one in 1799 for “Detection of Counterfeit Notes”. [USPTO Site].