In October 2004, enterpreneur Rocco Monteleone started a cereal bar called Bowls in Gainesville, Florida. Located in a college town with no other cereal bars, Bowls appeared likely to be a successful venture.

However, recently cereal bar chain Cereality (which has no locations in Florida) threatened Bowls with lawsuits should Bowls tread on Cereality's turf. Cereality has patents pending to give them an exclusive right to six business methods, including "displaying and mixing competitively branded food products" and adding "a third portion of liquid." If these patents are approved by the U.S. Patent Office, Cereality would have a complete monopoly on cereal bar business--just for being the first to put together the legalese necessary to describe mixing breakfast cereal.

FreeCulture.org is opposed to this sort of patent bullying -- using lawyers and exclusive rights on common ideas to beat smaller innovators and enterpreneurs into submission. This project is an expression of solidarity with Bowls in particular and the fight to reform patent and intellectual property law as a whole.

Because this isn't just about cereal. It's about whether or not people should be able to claim an exclusive right on mundane ideas that any eight-year-old could think of. And it's about the future of American enterpreneurship.

First, a little background: Patents are rights granted by governments for new inventions. A patent gives an inventor the exclusive right to produce his invention for a certain length of time. This exclusive right is meant to make it easier for inventors to cover the costs of research and development.

Normally, only mechanical or technological inventions would be considered patentable. That's why business method patents (like Cereality's) are so strange. A business method is not an invention. New business methods don't need patent protection; innovative ways of doing business make money by themselves. Many governments already recognize this fact: business methods aren't patentable in most other countries, including Canada and the European Union. Even in America, business method patents only became possible in 1998, when an appellate court decision changed the law.

Rather than encouraging innovation, business method patents inhibit innovation: entrepreneurs have to worry about whether their idea for running their business may have been patented before. That means more money spent on lawyers and a higher cost of doing business. What's more, when business method patents go to the extreme, they can shut out competitors from entire business sectors. That means less innovation, less competition, and less entrepreneurship.

FreeCulture.org is taking a three-pronged approach to the problem:

• We're asking Cereality to withdraw their patent application. (An apology would be nice, too.)
• If Cereality insists on continuing, we're asking the Patent Office to reject the application.
• And to solve the problem once and for all, we're asking Congress to eliminate business method patents altogether.

You can help by signing the petition online. We'll collect signatures until November 1. Then we'll send Cereality a letter telling them where we -- and you -- stand.

Click here to sign the petition and put a stop to business method patents.

Then: Tell your friends. Throw a cereal party. (We've got printable copies of the flyer and the petition.) Raise awareness of the problems posed by business method patents. Encourage everyone to sign the petition.

Finally: Enjoy a nice big bowl of cereal. Corn Pops and Cocoa Puffs go together rather nicely, I've found.