The practical downsides of software patents are overwhelming the upsides. For every "good" patent, there are dozens if not hundreds of trivial or ill-conceived patents. Perhaps if the review process were cleaned up and made rigorous, the net benefits would appear, but I'm not confident the Patent Office and Congress can pull that off. The current system benefits lawyers and patent hoarders, not inventors nor consumers.<p>At least enforce and scrutinize "non-obvious" better. The "obvious" problem is probably the biggest and most obvious current flaw. And the mere act of automating and/or emulating a physical process should be tossed out. A specific implementation may count (if non-obvious), but the very act of emulation by itself should not count as a patent. For example, emulating a physical slide-lock to unlock a smart-phone was granted a patent. All implementations of the emulation appeared to be susceptible to successful lawsuits. That is pure nonsense.