Its Bank of America what did you expect it? Even without technological knowledge you can deduct it is about money! If there is a good idea and it works just fine and is free don't be surprised some suits in corpo try to make more money and try put paten on it. Back in 2015 there was a scandal about expired paten on drug Cycloserine that went up in 24h from 500$ to 10.800$  after acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics. This is just example how greedy some companies can be.

I believe open source software should be FREE and everyone should have easy access. I think Bank of America try to patent some part of Bitcoin/Blockchain technology to stop other banks from using it in the future for free, even on first place is FREE and open source.