Lemley’s thesis is radically simple: “Most software patents today are written in functional terms,” he writes. “If courts would faithfully apply the 1952 Act, limiting those claims to the actual algorithms the patentees disclosed and their equivalents, they could prevent overclaiming by software patentees and solve much of the patent thicket problem that besets software innovation.”

via The software patent solution has been right here all along | Open Source Software – InfoWorld.