No Source Code == No Patent
Software patents have never contributed anything to society. Software is materially antithetical to patents. You can only ever clearly observe the output of software, and in many cases it&#x27;s either hard or impossible to investigate the actual method (i.e. the patentable part).<p>Regular patents work because they are easily** enforceable. If your competitor brings a rip-off of your machine on the market, you can buy one, take it apart, see the similarities with your own eyes, and have a case. If Meta rips off your method to apply an image filter, you better have 10 years of experience in reverse-engineering obfuscated code. Actually, don&#x27;t even bother. The code runs on their servers and you will never have the opportunity to even investigate it.<p>The upside to all of this is that a fun, creative interpretation of this exists. Which is that if you really want software patents, obfuscation and DRM should be forbidden so that patent claims can be investigated.<p>**: Yeah I know that&#x27;s no longer true in many cases.