Federal Circuit bars patent for business 'paradigm'

[Doug Mentohl]

During the heady dot-com heyday, patent attorney Scott Harris and his 
buddies set off to patent a far-out sounding "paradigm" for marketing 
software to customers.

The idea reached the end of the road Friday when the U.S. Court of 
Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that it's not worthy of a 
patent ..

"Applicants do no more than provide an abstract idea -- a business model 
for an intangible marketing company."

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202428886598