> That's what patents are for. Yes. Software was not well-anticipated by intellectual property law and has primarily been interpreted as an original creative

> That's what patents are for. Yes. Software was not well-anticipated by intellectual property law and has primarily been interpreted as an original creative work of the author(s) rather than a series of functional/operational commands that produce a "virtual mechanism" of sorts. Patents are really the correct model for this. Under patent law, software would be protected for 20 years instead of 100+ years, and the details of the invention would have to be disclosed in exchange for the state-granted monopoly rather than occurring automatically without any effort. Imagine a world where proprietary software would only be legally protected if the publisher first disclosed the source code and design documents in a publicly-available patent filing. IANAL