Uber patents the surge pricing method of their App. The business method patent is interesting in that the 1st claim is extraordinarily long. (see below)
What may be more telling about business method patenting is the number of references cited in this patent. 50 cited US references, only 7 foreign references, and 3 of those references are from Japan. The standard for obtaining a business method patent is definitely high, and will only increase from now.
"A method for determining a price for an on-demand service, the method being performed by one or more processors and comprising: for providers and customers in a population of users, (A) executing instructions on a corresponding mobile computing device of individual providers in order to cause the corresponding mobile computing device of that provider to send, to the on-demand service over one or more networks, one or more provider communications, the one or more provider communications including (i) position data obtained, as a result of executing the instructions on the corresponding mobile computing device of the provider, from a geo-aware resource of the corresponding mobile device of the provider, (ii) data corresponding to a status of the provider; and (B) executing instructions on a corresponding mobile computing device of individual customers in order to cause the corresponding mobile computing device of that customer to send, to the on-demand service over one or more networks, one or more customer communications, the one or more customer communications including position data obtained, as a result of executing instructions on the corresponding mobile computing device of the customer, from a geo-aware resource of the corresponding mobile device of the customer; during a given time interval, identifying, from the position data included with the one or more customer communications, a plurality of customers who are present in a given geographic region, including a first set of one or more customers for whom the corresponding mobile computing device is in communication with the on-demand service without those customers having made service requests through their respective corresponding mobile computing device, and (ii) a second set of one or more customers for whom the corresponding mobile computing device has been used to make a corresponding service request; during the given time interval, identifying, from the position data included with the one or more provider communications, a plurality of providers who are present in the given geographic region, including a first set of providers who are available to provide the on-demand service, the first set of providers being distinguished from at least a second set of providers who are each providing the service within the geographic region during at least a designated portion of the given time interval; for at least one or more instances of the given time interval in the given geographic region, estimating each of (i) a demand for the on-demand service from customers, based at least in part on a number of customers of the first set and the second set; and (ii) a supply of providers, based at least in part on a number of providers of the first set; for the given geographic region and during at least one or more instances of the given time interval, making a comparison of the estimated demand and the estimated supply; determining, based on the comparison, a price for providing the on-demand service to a given customer in the given geographic region and during at least the one or more instances of the given time interval; wherein determining the price is performed in real-time for a service request from the given customer, and when the determined price exceeds a threshold, the method further comprises providing an intermediate interface for which the given customer is to perform one or more actions as confirmation of the service request."