[xroche]

> Sometimes I am grateful that I live in Europe where software patents are not a thing.

Unfortunately they are. Software patents are in theory forbidden, but... you can patent a broader patent which will also cover the software variant.

Example: You want to patent the linked list. Obviously you can't do that in Europe, this is software patent (this is also an obvious patent, but there are ways to hide the obviousness through legalese language). But you can patent a "method for linking an abstract document to another one through a well-identified numerical identifier". This isn't per se a software patent, as you could have a real-world implementation (think of Choose Your Own Adventure books), but then you _also_ patented the software version.

This is how IP experts claims that "there are no software patents in Europe" despite accepting tens of thousands of them.