[danpalmer]

That is what patents attempt to be. There are many reasons that make them less effective at this than their ideal.

In particular, costs are high, litigation to protect is expensive, and so your average student wouldn't be able to afford this. The fact that software is typically shipped virtually means that borders are practically non-existent, and wide patents are often needed, or a company needs to give up on defending their patent outside their primary market.

To patent an idea will probably be around $10-100k per market. To cover US, EU, and large Asian markets, you're looking at $500k-1m, and thats just to get the patent. Then you'll need to defend it, which can be hard to do against entities based in non-compliant countries such as China.

This all means that unless you're defending the very core of your entire business proposition, you probably need to be a >$100m before it's worth pursuing patents, and even for the core of your business you probably need to have several million in funding.