Fortune.com - Investing - Trash to Treasure

I saw reference to story on Fortune.com via Dave Farber's list, this evening and was amazed. If the article is accurate, it's saying that J.P. Morgan has applied for a business practice patent for buying out underwater stock options from a companies employees. The article mentions how the company just did this with a bunch of Microsoft employees, and how they are looking into making a business out of this. I'm not an expert in the financial world, but there has to be some kind of prior art for this. I just can't believe that this is really a novel idea worthy of a patent. It's just another example of why I believe our patent system in the US is badly in need of an overhaul.