Or, no patents at all on anything, and let's collect some of the money that saves enterprise and fund those few industries that need patents to be profitable.

Or, no patents at all on anything, and let's collect some of the money that saves enterprise and fund those few industries that need patents to be profitable. But, who are we kidding anyway. Software patents cannot e gotten rid off because of the entrenched patent holders. If you let them keep those patents they have an unfair market advantage over new entrants, and if you retroactively cancel all software patents (if you can define such a category) then they'll sue the government's pants off and through the court system have software patents declared legal. The onything i could imagine is gradually shortening the lifetime of software patents to decrease their harm and attractiveness.