Last month a lawsuit filed by GRQ Investment Management against Financial Engines caught the attention of market participants tracking the rise of so-called robo-advisers. Co-founded by legendary economist William Sharpe, Financial Engines is a Sunnyvale, California–based online adviser focused on defined contribution pension plans and individual investors; it has $824 billion under administration and $92 billion under management. Plano, Texas–based GRQ alleges that the firm has infringed upon GRQ’s patents on systems used to provide computer-based advisory services (see also “随着Robo-Adviser收集资产，该模型仍然未经证实“）。
该诉讼，在德克萨斯州东区的美国地区法院提交，是一系列知识产权案件的最新案件，可能会影响在线自动化咨询公司的商业模式。2011年的富裕资本管理，基于弗吉尼亚的注册投资顾问和软件提供商融资顾问的所有者，起诉瑞士银行UBS，声称专利侵犯了金融软件平台中使用的财务规划方法。索赔围绕第三方软件旋转，瑞银财务顾问用于为个人客户创建财务计划。瑞银在金融社会中令人知意，当它选择解决法院的争端，以及银行的软件供应商的Pietech，以获得未公开的金额。
这些和类似的法律诉讼可能导致快速新兴的在线咨询部门造成问题，因为它们是在捍卫部分基于方法论的卫生专利的尝试。担心的是，广泛的解释可以包括以前考虑过免疫知识产权盗窃的商业实践。对于使用软件来自动化资产配置和财务规划的顾问，甚至在内部开发的程序均可与独特编码发生意外与专利重叠。
金融服务不是唯一面临着知识产权投资组合管理人员的法律行动的唯一行业，也称为专利巨魔，该专利巨魔获取现有专利，以便在据称由商业运营的公司侵犯这些专利。The number of suits filed in the U.S. by patent trolls climbed to 3,134 in 2013, according to data provider PatentFreedom, a part of San Francisco–based RPX Corp. That tally was almost 20 percent higher than in 2012 and accounted for more than half of the year’s patent infringement suits.
在2013年向美国国会的报告中，政府责任办公室发现诉讼中的诉讼激增主要是由于“软件相关专利往往具有过于明确或不明确的索赔”的事实。该报告还指出，“即使对于仅为产品的小贡献的思想，法院的大型金融奖的可能性，也可能是专利所有者提出侵权诉讼的激励。”
Patent litigation can have a disastrous impact on smaller firms. “There are companies whose sole purpose is to sue anyone that might infringe on a patent from a nonoperating company,” says John Frankel, founding partner of ff Venture Capital. “This creates quite a dynamic for a start-up, and patent litigation can end up being an unfair burden on them,” adds Frankel, who launched New York–based ff to focus on early-stage investments after spending more than two decades with Goldman Sachs Group.
Some critics argue that the bigger threat of overzealous intellectual-property defenses is the risk of stifling innovation. “Technological or other innovation in our industry is never the result of huge investment or back-breaking intellectual effort that should be rewarded with exclusive use of the invention to the extent that it forecloses others from inventing similar things and thereby slows our progress,” contends Thomas Peterffy, founder and CEO of Interactive Brokers.
Peterffy一般令人宣传在金融服务业的专利授予专利，而是作为一种防守措施，他的格林威治，基于康涅狄格州的在线经纪公司已经申请了几个自己的专有技术，即提供给客户提供的专有技术。他注意到，许多诉讼知识产权所有者实际上没有提供商品或服务。
“我特别反对专利保护inventions that are not actively used by their inventors,” says Peterffy, who in the 1970s and ’80s played a key role in the development of electronic trading of securities and the adoption of algorithmic trading models, particularly for derivatives. Interactive Brokers, which has existed in its current form since 1993, has more than 800 staff and some 268,000 customer accounts.
虽然对金融服务业的知识产权诉讼令人担忧，但在近期可能有理由，但法律专家们注意到最近的案例历史可以支持运营公司。“最高法院的意见爱丽丝公司v。CLS银行是关于软件可专利性的重要决定，“伊利诺伊州理工学院芝加哥肯特学院知识产权教授的法律和主任教授David Schwartz说。“然而，决定的影响是2014年6月出来的，将花一些时间来解决。”
The U.S. Supreme Court quashed Alice’s lawsuit against CLS Bank International, a New York–headquartered specialist in currency settlement services, ruling that its claims for a patent governing software that manages electronic escrow funds transfer were vague to the point of abstraction. According to Schwartz, the case will have an important bearing on similar suits. Until the courts offer more clarity, though, online advisers appear to remain vulnerable to attempts to enforce older patents.
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