of ways. When you sort a list of addresses within an address book program,
in principle, the algorithm that sorts the list could be one of a million such
programs. (There's more than one way to skin a cat.) When you display a
picture, how the picture is displayed is nothing that is obvious to the devel-
oper or user.

But beginning in the 1980s, courts started recognizing software in-
ventions as patentable inventions. And by the early 1990s, these patents
had taken off. Patent applications for software-related patents went from 250
in 1980 to 21,000 in 1999, and the number granted has increased eight- or
ninefold.[11-81]

What was most striking about this explosion of law regulating innovation
was that the putative beneficiaries of this regulation -- coders -- were fairly
uniformly against it. As Richard Stallman put it, "We did not ask for the
change that was imposed upon us."[11-82] And this attitude was not limited to
free software advocates. When the U.S. Patent Office began explaining this
new benefit it would be providing software developers, key developers from
a range of software industries were frantic in avoiding the benefit. As Doug-
las Brotz from Adobe Corporation said in 1994:

____ I believe that software per se should not be allowed patent protection. I
____ take this position as the creator of software and as the beneficiary of the re-
____ wards that innovative software can bring in the marketplace... [Adobe
____ and I] take this position because it is the best policy for maintaining a
____ healthy software industry, where innovation can prosper.[11-83]

Oracle took the same position.[11-84] The system wasn't broken, these coders
said. It certainly didn't need Washington to fix it.

But Washington was not to be deterred, and the push for software patents
did not go away. Quite the opposite. Over time, the push was for even
broader patent protection -- this time to cover business processes as well as
software inventions.

A software-implemented business process patent is a patent for a process
of doing business, sufficiently novel and nonobvious to earn the U.S. Patent
and Trademark Office's favor.[11-85] Most thought such processes beyond the
reach of patent law. This was not because patent law never covered
processes -- it plainly did. But the expectation was that it would not cover
business processes because adequate return from the process itself would
create a sufficient incentive to invent.[11-86]

In 1998, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Cir-

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v?