Quoting Clarke Sideroad (clarke.sideroad@???):

> I believe software should not be patent-able although could/should be
> protected under a shortened copyright term at worst.

It used to be the case that software was not patentable. The
consequence was that, e.g., the patent on Diffie-Hellman encryption was
acquired through creating a bespoke physical computing device that
embodied the algorithm, and patenting the methods used in that device,
instead.

So, banning software patents is difficult, because of the ease of
instantiating software in hardware.