I don't think the problem with software patents exists solely in the fundamental difference between hardware and software. I think the problem arises from a num

I don't think the problem with software patents exists solely in the fundamental difference between hardware and software. I think the problem arises from a number of things including the number of software inventors (nearly every programmer at one time or another) and the abstract nature of software. These things tend to mean that inventions are far more likely to coinvented than copied in the world of software. An enforcement of the level of nonobviousness needed in software patents to make them useful for society would just about ban them outright anyway.