Patenting Virtual Commerce

Last week I received the following email from an officer of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO):

I am a Patent Examiner at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in the area of Business Methods, Finance. I am the examiner of record of multiple patent applications (20+) involving virtual worlds and different types of credit accounts, charge accounts, escrow transactions, risk mitigation (to name a few) used within these worlds….I am looking for references from 2004 and earlier. A published paper, game manual, or even a detailed blog entry that details the economic system / banking system / shopping / business creation in a MMORPG (especially Second Life) would be amazingly helpful.

As a relative newcomer to virtual worlds (I started writing on these matters in May of 2007), I promised that I would pass on this challenge to readers of the site Terra Novans.

You can link to the Terra Nova post here , which provides some insights from the USPTO and a patent attorney, along with some of my own questions. I am posting this short article because it includes pdf files of the two patent applications I discuss. Get to the pdfs by clicking on the 'attachments' link below).