To play devil's advocate: Why should someone researching battery materials, testing various combinations for charge holding and minimal voltage fluctuation, et

To play devil's advocate: Why should someone researching battery materials, testing various combinations for charge holding and minimal voltage fluctuation, etc., be rewarded with a patent when someone doing the same with DNA sequences for increase grain yields be prevented from getting a patent. What about a new type of phone closure mechanism. There are thousands of patent applications (or were in my day, though I never worked on this material) for phone flips and sliders. What about a qubit based factorisation circuit - and then how about the completely novel software required to pass instructions to that circuit. The hardware interface between qubit and IC, how about when it's done using FPGA (effectively software). How about software alterations that alter the battery use in a phone through microswitching that extends the battery life beyond the benefits of the new materials in my first example. Why rule out software that can have a greater hard physical effect and allow hardware that may not make as good an improvement. (note "technical effect" is a route to getting a software patent in Europe).