Some of you may recall that I work in finance. So I was kind of surprised to read last month that a patent spat has broken out in the options trading world. As Joe Mullin notes, the trading world has not been super-saturated with patents. This particular dispute is over patents on ways of matching trades using not just the order data themselves, but also including market data (quotes).

The current round is actually a continuation of a long-running battle and will have a big impact in terms of who gets to offer what information, and what trading instruments, to investors. This is a big deal since the crash in the US markets happened a few years ago. Although prices that are in the public eye (such as Apple's stock price, or the much-overhyped Dow Jones) have regained their values, what's missing from the picture is volume. A lot of money has left the markets - trillions of dollars by most estimates - and much of the exchanges' business is based on volume. The result is that competition for flow is at an all-time high and entities that can establish themselves as a sole place to trade something desirable will be in a much securer position.

This will tend to lead companies in the direction of IP struggles; however, the financial sector has had a pretty long stream of negative press. Getting involved in more patent disputes is only going to make more bad headlines and scare away more investors. As a result, I think things will stay largely tamped down and we won't see the financial sector erupt into the sort of all-out patent wars that high tech is getting known for.