Although people still use cash to pay for goods and services, the trend is toward payment cards. In the U.S., payment card networks coordinate the activities of thousands of financial institutions, millions of retail locations, and several hundred million consumers. This coordination may include...

Over the past two decades, the scope of technologies that can be patented has been expanded to include many items previously thought unsuitable for patenting, for example, computer software. Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants 20,000 or more software patents a year. Conventional...