Anyone who works in Open Source realizes the craziness existing related to the ownership of ideas.
Patenting some software is a little like being able to patent the fact that pencil lead gets transferred to piece of paper to produce words, and all subsequent businesses that write things down with a pencil have to pay the patent owner a percentage of their gross sales.
This example is in no way an exaggeration.
There’s a pretty decent submission to the Patent and Trademark Office authored by the League for Programming Freedom on this subject.
Of course, some software can be patented. But some of the more fundamental stuff – well, it just makes little sense to – and has far-reaching detrimental potential.