Banning software patents

There are two ways to write a law that would protect software from patents:

• Excluding software from patentability - exclude software from the subject matter that can be patented
• Shielding software from litigation - declare that use and distribution of software can never constitute infringement

The latter is an alternative, suggested in 2012. It looks promising but has received the decades of scrutiny that the exclusion approach has.

A third way would be to abolish the entire patent system, for all domains, but this would require many times more work and there's no consensus on whether it's a good idea. There are advantages in focusing only on software.

For advice about terminology, see:

• Choosing words to use in legal proposals
• How other domains are excluded from patentability