I hate to stick up for Microsoft, but Software patents are a really BAD idea. It's like being able to patent a plot-twist
in a new novel...and then nobody else could ever write such a story twist without paying you (or your heirs) tribute.
If there were no software patents Microsoft would be the worlds biggest loser... that alone is a great reason to abolish them :-)
One of the really cool things as far as software patents go, is the original Bell Labs patent on the UNIX setuid function was done as an electronic circuit, using logic gates. IIRC, for many years, you could only patent an "invention," not an idea, like a mathematical formula or algorythm.
Mark
It's not quite that simple...software patents include things like algorithms, new and novel ways of processing data - on the same plane as new and novel ways to process plastic, or silicon, or petroleum.
Inventors deserve protection and profit opportunity for broadening the scientific knowledge of mankind, software people included (software people especially, since the next wave of computation will fold hardware and software over one another in a way we haven't yet seen).
If there were no software patents Microsoft would be the worlds biggest loser... that alone is a great reason to abolish them :-)
Don't bet on it. More likely, Microsoft would be able to appropriate without cost anyone else's software, and since they have the best programmers, and probably the most of them, their capital advantage alone would let them flood the market with ripoffware.