Contract generation via templates
<p>I just found out about a patent application filed in 2004
covering creating legal contracts using templates.  It's being pushed again:
<a href="http://www.google.com/patents/US20060287966" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/patents/US20060287966</a></p>

<p>Surely legal firms have been doing this before 2004?    </p>

<p>Bit worried that what we currently do (making legal documents from templates) will suddenly be patented and we'll be forced into an untenable situation in the US.<br>
Any thoughts, history or prior art anyone?</p>

<p>The reason that this patent application is still pending after more than a decade is that the claims they tried to get in the original application were indeed far too broad, and they have kept trying (and failing) to get more protection than they deserve. In its current form, the claims have many more limitations (meaning, only a much more specific set of actions would infringe the patent), but the application still has not been allowed, so even those claims may not stand as they are.</p>

<p>If you're interested in seeing the current state of the application, go to the USPTO's <a href="http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair" rel="nofollow">Public PAIR</a> site and search for application number 11/020,605. Then, click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab, and select the most recent "Claims" (at the time of writing, dated 07-17-2015). This will pop out a document viewer showing the claims in their current state. Right now, the independent claims (the ones you should care about to see if you would infringe) are numbers 28, 29, and 30. </p>

contract-law patents