You say that you approve of RSA because if someone is using it, its inevitable that they learned of it from RSA. I don't think you'd have to go that far to say

You say that you approve of RSA because if someone is using it, its inevitable that they learned of it from RSA. I don't think you'd have to go that far to say what's worth patenting. I think that's the purpose of patents -- to make people disclose worthwhile discoveries so that others can benefit from them at a fee -- but they can't be structured that way legally, because unlike copyright, it's very hard to show the origin of ideas. What makes a patent a bad patent is usually that it's on the idea of what's a good idea to do from a business perspective, and once you've realized that, hey, online auctions are a great idea, the mechanics of writing the code is pretty straightforward, as you say. I'm not clear how things are de facto in European law, but from reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_258/03 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_258/03 it looks like at least some people are on the right track -- you can patent something involving software, but only if you innovation is technical in nature, not a business innovation that involves a lot of technical details to implement.