Abstract Ideas Don’t Deserve Patents
For software patents, I'm a fan of Richard Stallman's idea that software patents should require working, annotated source code be attached. I think that this would make it easier to compare ideas to those in previous patents.<p>If patent filers chose to obfuscate their code, ideally their patent would be rejected for being unclear, or at least, they'd have a hard time defending their patent, as the difference between it and an alleged infringer would be quite large.