[crazy2be]

That may be true, but is irrelevant.

Mathematics is not patentable either, and there are many "significantly new" innovations there.

The position of whether software should be patentable depends mostly if you think of it like math, or like pharmaceuticals. The former requires mostly just a lot of thinking, and very little money. The latter requires massive quantities of cash, expensive equipment, trials, lawyers, etc.

A large number of software patents don't even require a lot of thinking- the majority of the work goes into writing the patent, rather than the creating the system to be patented.

Short patents on truly new software inventions could be overall a benefit to the software industry. But the crappy ones are unquestionably a significant drag.