Travelers, the $25.4 billion insurer, wants to improve people's risk management skills. It applied for patents for systems to measure how busy a road or building or transportation system is. The data would show a customer how she puts herself at risk in daily life--and Travelers would price her insurance policy accordingly.

Strategies for conditioning consumers to change their routines are also at the heart of a recent Amazon.com patent. The $48.1 billion e-commerce company created a system to lead users through customized link paths based on analysis of how other users have interacted with similar links in the past, "much as pheromones deposited by ants attract other ants."

It's hard to say whether any or all of these patented ideas will be made into products or services, says PARC's Lunt, but patenting ahead of the market is sound strategy. Patents like this put rivals on notice not to tread too close, she says. PARC, for example, patented optical laser technology for printing that became quite lucrative when optical media like CDs and DVDs took off, she says. More recently, PARC patented mobile technology for commuters that detects when ride-sharing partners deviate suspiciously off-course. "That will become valuable only if ride-sharing becomes a much bigger activity," she says. "We would love to license it."

Some patents might appear unrealistic as commercial products now, but could prove valuable in the future, Lunt says. "Sometimes they turn out to be used in ways you don't anticipate and turn out to be quite valuable."

We don't know yet how strenuously rivals may challenge the new crop of patents. Allstate's suit against Nationwide may establish how truly different insurance policies created by data analysis have to be. Perhaps Humana's online health game won't turn out to be appreciably different from any other healthcare company's. But as IT continues to permeate business models in so many industries, companies will feel pressured to protect any advantage they can gain, says Lanza, the intellectual property attorney. Companies with a vibrant and vigorous patent strategy--including both offensive and defensive moves--gain a reputation for innovation, he says. And innovation "is a fantastic barrier to competition."