[Barraketh]

A large problem with software patents is that feature definition and implementation have been rolled into one. Patents were designed to protect implementation - that is, you can't patent having an engine in the car, but you can patent a specific design (implementation) of an engine. In the software world I feel like that distinction has been blurred.

Even if we assume that software is patentable, the bounce back effect should not be patentable. The reason is that all the novelty is in coming up with the feature itself. I don't know whether I could come up with the bounce back effect by myself. I know for a fact that I could implement it, and so could any sufficiently strong software engineer. There is no novelty in the implementation that is worthy of patent protection.

This is trade dress all over again hiding under a different name. It should be given a different status (just like business patents), and different time frames of protection. This way we still protect truly novel research in algorithms (pagerank for example), while eliminating 95% of the patents we as software engineers find so objectionable.

[danielweber]

The reason is that all the novelty is in coming up with the feature itself.

This is a very good point. Often times knowing the feature you need to implement is the really hard thing. Once you've decided on that, it's trivial to implement, even if you're the first to do it.