[xilun0]

More on 2.; for the purpose of disclosing knowledge, patents are typically somewhere between 10 and 1000x less useful than a good scientific paper. And the content of the innovative parts of most scientific papers are not covered by patents. Open source software is another thing that makes software patents useless for the purpose of disclosure; the value it could bring to society is hugely inferior to the value achieved by open source software + academic publications, and the cost is hugely superior. In itself, that should be enough to forbid software patents, especially because there are at the same time proven efficient ways to protect computer programs.