What I see is most physical patents involve something that is actually novel--the low-hanging fruit was picked long ago. Most software patents involve somethin

What I see is most physical patents involve something that is actually novel--the low-hanging fruit was picked long ago. Most software patents involve something that would be the expected product (or one of a small set of possible products) of assigning a software engineer to solve the problem. (To me the clearest example of this is blinking cursors. Draw by inversion or draw with a backing store--both are obvious techniques to any software professional, both were at one time patented.)