When I first saw the abstract in the most recent PM Journal*, I was taken aback. I couldn’t believe that the patent wars had reached the shores of the Project Management industry. Yet, here it is. They’ve stormed the beaches without us even knowing they were there.
Here’s the key statement in the entire report: “Nearly every typical activity in project management is protected by a respective business method patent.” How did we get here?
Business method patent law has been steadily evolving over the past 15 years. A 1998 case involving Signature Financial vs. State Street Bank established business methods as patentable. Please check out this article that explain the patent troll companies.
A patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas. Instead, trolls are in the business of litigation (or even just threatening litigation). They often buy up patents cheaply from companies down on their luck who are looking to monetize what resources they have left, such as patents.
This isn’t to say that the companies that own these business method patents intend malicious harm, but why go through the trouble? And who owns these project management related business patents? The usual players: IBM, Microsoft, SAP, HP, and Oracle.
Theses are large conglomerate companies not dedicated to project management. In contrast, single product project management companies don’t have patents due to lack of experience with the law or, more likely, due to their opposition to intellectual property rights. These companies also tend to be open-source.
The article is worth a review if for nothing more than to chronicle the encroachment of the big players into project management business methods. In short order, all patents could be the domain of the “Borg” software companies listed above.
*Project Management Journal, February/March 2014, Volume 45, Number 1
p.38, “Project Management Related Software Systems and Their Legal Protection: Emergence, Distribution, and Relevance of Business Method Patents”