Even with Prior Art, it takes $$ to void a patent.
The whole patent system needs to exclude software, plain and simple.
If you can't physically touch it, you can't patent it (I know this flies in the face of my employer who is a major patent holder in technologies that can't be physically touched - so what to do about that ? tuff ? change my view ? think of something different ? maybe another standard of patentability ?)
Um, I would argue that quite a bit of your IP is touchable. Silicon implementations are probably on the dividing line.
That's still just software.
That would mean anyone who wants to patent software, just has to have it embedded in silicon, and it's suddenly valid ! (got a new way to do XML Office Documents ? silicon it !)
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