By Suzanne McGee

(Reuters) -The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared the way for Dimensional Fund Advisors to launch an exchange-traded fund share class on 13 of its existing mutual funds, according to a notice on the regulator’s website late on Monday afternoon.

This removes the last remaining hurdle facing DFA in its bid to become the first new player to offer ETF share classes of existing mutual funds in more than two decades, and is likely to clear the way for approval of dozens of similar applications by other asset managers.

Vanguard, the first and so far the only asset manager to offer an ETF share class ranking alongside similar mutual fund share classes aimed at institutional or retail clients or financial advisors, had a 20-year patent on the product that expired in

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