It's not just the UK that allows software patents in practice - as the discussion hints at, Germany does too, and if I remember rightly pretty much the last pat

It's not just the UK that allows software patents in practice - as the discussion hints at, Germany does too, and if I remember rightly pretty much the last patent affecting MP3 was a German patent on zero-padding held by Philips, who enforced it aggressively against manufacturers of devices like music players.