This is not exactly news, but it’s still relevant:

Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents?

— Letter to the Patent Office, From Professor Donald Knuth, February 1994

Dr. Knuth points out that he couldn’t have written TeX, the formatting language used in most mathematical and physics texts, if software patents had been possible at the time.

Patent thickets can become so thick that nothing gets through. That’s not good risk management.

-jsq