In the United States, since the USPTO changed their rules to allow software and business method patents, competition has been hindered and lawyers have profited.
The intent of the USPTO is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to inventors the exclusive right to their respective discoveries...Through the issuance of patents, we encourage technological advancement by providing incentives to invent, invest in, and disclose new technology worldwide.
However, US software patents are a farce. Most software patents granted are for trivial techniques. There is very little or no investment to "discover" these techniques. Filing a US software patent has become a "who can get their first" land grab. One can argue that a patent granted is not necessarily enforcable, however, the resulting struggle benefits lawyers and hurts small companies and competition. This is not the environment we wish to foster.
While Europe was dangerously close to adopting the US software patent guidelines, the UK has recently defied the US by declaring that it will not allow business patents and it will retain it's strictly narrow rules on software patents which allow only novel software algorithms to be protected. This should protect algorithms such as RSA's encryption and Google's PageRank, while leaving the tens of thousands of ridiculous US patents out in the cold.
I would be satisfied if we could draw guidelines similar to the UK and end ridiculous software patents. However, if this proves impossible for us to manage, it will be better to return to our previous state where software patents were invalid, than to continue with the disaster that we have today.
The software industry is particularly vulnerable to legal action, because most software techniques are not patented. This means that years after the first invention of a new technique, a legally savvy company will file a patent application, and years after that will threaten legal action if patent royalties are not paid. The most effective counter tactics we can use to cut off this kind of needless legal action is to build databases and communities dedicating to preserving and finding prior art.
Find Prior Art:
Other links against software patents: