Social impact - Software's specific nature

A "software patent" is not a patent on a software but a patent on an innovative process that processes information.

There is no possible distinction between a series of instructions given to a computer and a series of instructions given to an human.

Any computer program is scientifically equivalent to a mathematical proof

Professor Donald Knuth - http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt

(...) trying to make a distinction between mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical algorithms (...) makes no sense, because every algorithm is as mathematical as anything could be. An algorithm is an abstract concept unrelated to physical laws of the universe.
(...) Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the words. 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?