Patents are a topic I would usually post about on my personal blog. In this case, the subject of the patents is fundamentally weighted index trackers.
I agree with the view expressed on Against Monopoly that there is prior art, The patent might be refused, and, if not, it is likely to be overturned in court. Given the number of well financed competitors in this area, it is likely to go to court. In, any case, it is likely to only ever be patentable in the US.
Nonetheless, if the principle of patenting investment strategies and methodologies is established, it would have far-reaching, and worrying consequences. The problems are very similar to those with software patents and business method patents. By establishing a very wide monopoly, competition is stifled. Imagine if previous generations of ideas for new financial products had been patented: suppose there was just one fund company who could run index trackers, and only one that could use statistical arbitrage, and so on.
I even have reservations about the occasional trade-mark claims made on financial terminology, such as EVA. It threatens to make clear communication more difficult if two groups of people (those authorised by the trademark holders, and those not) use different terms for the same concept. So far, this has not been a problem because the majority of such trademarks are on words that can easily be replaced with a widely understood generic term, such as a particular banks implementation of a type of valuation model. It does not matter if only the name of the former is a trademark.
At the moment, patents are a potential problem rather than an actual one, but as many people in the software industry could tell you, this could change very quickly.