No, you can't argue that code can be treated as a patent because then you could argue that poetry can be treated as a patent and you'd wind up in a nonsensical

No, you can't argue that code can be treated as a patent because then you could argue that poetry can be treated as a patent and you'd wind up in a nonsensical hell of never being able to write another line of code, poetry, or prose because you'd be patenting coding and writing itself, essentially. It would be illegal to write a "hello world" program, for example. Actually, that's not that far from what's currently illegal under patent law, so I should say that you can't argue that code can be treated as a patent and make a rational argument out of it (Congress can argue that, in other words).