If you believe that patents, in general, are more good than bad, because they coax trade secrets out into the open after an amount of time, then they are just a

If you believe that patents, in general, are more good than bad, because they coax trade secrets out into the open after an amount of time, then they are just as valid for inventive software as for inventive hardware/chemistry/biology/mechanics. I'm not sure that follows. Do you think the ability to keep and preserve trade secrets is the same for all those fields? Keeping a trade secret in software that runs on end user' computers seems much more difficult than keeping the technique used in a chemical reaction a secret. I tend to think that just about everything software related would otherwise be out there and available. I'm also not sure that coaxing trade secrets into the open is a significant reason that patents are good. At least, I have trouble thinking of cases in any of those fields (much less software) where I think that the overall rate of scientific progress in the world is better as a result of knowledge disclosed in a patent. Do you have examples? In particular, for something software related that is better known today because it was disclosed in a patent which has since expired?