Of course, obviously PATENT != COPYRIGHT
I think you said all that needs to be said right here. Different law, different requirements, and different intentions. This case has nothing at all to do with patents or patent law, and certainly nothing to do with software patents.
Unlike every other kind of working patent, software patents generally describe the outcome/result of something instead of the actual mechanism (patents of physical things are based on the WAY it works, not what it produces, SW patents are generally based i the end product).
If you read a typical software patent, you'll see that it usually does describe a specific mechanism. It doesn't necessarily describe it down to the lines of source code used to implement it, but it is required to disclose the mechanics of the patent adequately enough that a person reasonably-knowledgeable in the field could implement it. For example, while one can't patent "sorting algorithms" ... one can patent a specific sorting algorithm, but, in doing so, one has to describe exactly how it works in the patent.
Your statement is patently (heh) false.
If suit is upheld it means software patents *could* have an extra life, and indeed if a vendor wants to squeeze out competition they could simply file for a COPYRIGHT on the visible result of the software too.
IANAL, but food for thought.
Read up a little on copyright. "Works" that can be copyrighted are (broadly speaking) constrained to artistic works. The closest software analogue of such a "work" is a user interface, and user interfaces are, in fact, subject to copyright.
Say Software Patent X, when utilized, produced visible result Y. X is protected as a system and/or method via a patent. Anything else that uses that system/method is infringing on that patent. Completely independently, Y is protected by copyright; anything that looks like Y is violating that copyright. If X were to enter the public domain, and someone implemented X (freely) and made the result look like Y, then you can, indeed, claim copyright violation, not because of anything related to X, but rather because someone else produced a derivative work of Y. However, someone wanting to use the now-free X system/method would merely have to present it differently to overcome this. Neither X nor Y add any protection to each other.
In other words, using other peoples' user interfaces can violate their copyright. Nothing new here, nor particularly objectionable.
