Software Patents are no more than Business Land Mines in the form of Monopolies. The whole idea of monopolizing an idea is ludicrous. The idea of choosing what's innovative and what's not is absurd. If necessity is the mother of all invention (and it usually is), then one man's "innovation" is another's necessity.
Business-wise, they are nothing more than government granted monopolies, and hidden land mines. They are totally ludicrous from a social perspective because they hurt everyone.
I lied.
They don't hurt *everyone*. Patents feed IP (Intellectual Property) lawyers and subsidize the legal industry. Think of them as a legalized tax to subsidize IP lawyers and law firms (while clogging the courts, impeding software engineers, and increasing software business risk and expense).
Which brings me to a first-hand observation: When software developers fought the patenting of software at the USPTO hearings, one side of the room was lawyers, and the other side was software engineers. One side was in favor of institutionalizing s/w patents, the other against. (Guess which side was which.) Aside from the merit of anyone's arguments, the sides were well represented since the room was crowded on both sides of the aisle (how did people know which side they belonged on!?).
I lied again.
The front table... you know... the one making the final decision... was ALL LAWYERS. So much for balanced representation and due process.
Yup. Foregone conclusion. The all lawyer council hosted the hearings, presented the issues like it was being debated, and then rubberstamped it into existence. We're still suffering, without a fix in sight.
You don't believe me? Just ask Bruce Lehmann. He ran the USPTO, railroaded software patents into existence using his position. Oh, I'm sure he'll lie and tell you he did no such thing, but he did. (Oh, and see WTO and DMCA for follow-ups by same guy. He's not a brainjob by my reckoning, just a puppet.) I believe the legal industry pulled a fast one on Joe Public with software patents, and is still raking in the big bucks while innovation, good business, good government, and consumer product development suffer.