Front runningYou won't need me to tell you that, despite malicious gossip to the contrary put about by other members of the financial community, the futures world often leads the way in innovation. We have moved on from the kind of prehistoric problems that affect, for example, the OTC universe (which mainly seem to revolve around lawyers posting each other big piles of paper without losing them). In fact, every so often I see something that almost brings a tear to my eye when I notice another example of a futures market idea catching on in the wider world. So it was last week when I heard that no less a corporation than McDonald's has caught on to the idea of trying to patent something that nobody else realised was patentable, an idea, let's not forget, that first hit the headlines a couple of years back when attempted by our...