[nickpinkston]

Not sure technically, but software patents are a subset of methods patents (which I'm guessing this is), but at least very similar to the point where I think it's very applicable to this. The discussion needs to keep going - that petition was a great success, but I'm doubtful that the administration dares to talk about it in anything other than platitudes.

[drgath]

The definition of "software patent" is about as misused as "impeachment" or "HTML5". Ending software patents fixes very little with what is wrong with the patent industry because most of what people assume are software patents, likely aren't. Take the Lodesys patent debate for example, at least one of those (#7,222,078) wouldn't be considered a "software patent". PG says Amazon's 1-click checkout patent isn't a "software patent" (http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html). Software patents are not the issue.

[dangrossman]

They're two separate issues. Business method patents purely claim methods of doing business. Software patents claim the invention of new machines, they're a subset of traditional patents, and do not overlap with business method patents. Software patents are almost always framed as a machine which carries out the algorithm or process as to be patentable the invention must be more than a mathematical formula acting on itself.