The courts you are talking about are mostly the ones from the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The plan is to remove patentable subject matter from the hands of the ECJ, transferring that to a specialized patent court, similar to the CAFC.
"How exactly is German case law relevant here?"
German judges are the number one candidates to populate such european courts. There is now a series of decisions in Germany, notably the Siemens document generation patent, which has abolished the exclusion of software patents in DE:
http://translate.google.be/translate?u=http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bundesgerichtshof-ebnet-Weg-fuer-Softwarepatente-1003190.html&sl=de&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
"The relevant case law is the case law of the boards of appeal of the EPO"
Administrative tribunals run by patent examiners without a law degree do not produce case law.
"why should a software engineer be privileged over an electrical engineer"
Because software authors write code, and deserve freedom of expression.
The EPO invented the term "computer implemented invention" in the late nineties because they knew that the Berne Convention was already protecting "computer programs" as literary works.
Authors are spoiled from the right to benefit of the fruits of their work.
As far as I know, electrical engineers have to deal with physical forces and all that, not with a text editor.
"It's not linked to software patents"
Of course it is linked, do you really believe that they wont file any software patent in the field of "Information and Communication Technologies":
http://www.agglotv.com/?p=15499
"Le domaine d’intervention prioritaire du fonds sera dans un premier temps les nouvelles technologies de l’information et de la communication"
Maybe they will stick themselves to resistors and hardware, but it is obvious that 95% of patents in "ICT" are now software.
"Someone please explain to me how the Unitary patent is a push towards software patents"
Thats very simple, take the German case law and make it the default for the whole of Europe.
"why software patents are a bad thing"
Because it is insane to ask authors to check zillion of claims before being able to write a piece of code.
s/at the final attempt to validate software patents/as the final attempt to validate software patents/
Do you have a copy of the FAT jugement in Germany?
The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.