Making innovative software was a good way to get sued before the Supreme Court stepped in. Google had to spend more money on patents and litigation than it did on R&D. Small start ups were being squeezed by lawyers. There are about 11 million profesional software developers and another 7.5 hobiest programmers. These programmers produce code everyday. Every line of code coud be patented. Every line of code should be prior art. Do you think the patent office examines the 1.2 million apps in the Itunes app store? Does it keep up to date on GitHub's 3.4 million users? Every update, every submission is prior art. None of it is looked at. Patents on software is a bad joke.