Earlier this year, Patent Hawk worked extensively on a project to map holes in the neighborhoods of select areas of finance-oriented patents as a means to reap coverage in those areas by the client firm, one of the nation's largest financial services companies.

The action is intense - last year, 6,226 finance-oriented patent applications were filed, up from 927 in 1997, the year before the State Street ruling that opened the floodgates to business method patents.