The big original reason patents came into existence was to reduce the number of trade secrets - an obvious block to progress; by ensuring that more inventions w

The big original reason patents came into existence was to reduce the number of trade secrets - an obvious block to progress; by ensuring that more inventions would enter the public domain (which was once rare and much tech was lost as a result, or very local.) See the history of forceps. Secondarily, as with copyright, you are rewarding the task of creativity. So, can you extend this first principle to software? Only if the software could operate in "a cloud" far from the user and therefore never be reverse engineered... which, oops, is exactly where we are. If there are no software patents, don't think that will mean that everyone gets to use the newest and greatest algorithms, it's more likely to mean that they will remain very private property that nobody else can build on top of. That situation could take us back centuries.