by Jamie King, Luca Lucarini This is a documentary film outlining how software patents (aka "patents on processes") have taken the patenting process and turned it into a legal playground where only the heavily lawyered-up can survive. Most would be amazed to know that just a couple of decades or so ago, there were no "software patents" to speak of.  Until the 1990s, software was considered unpatentable because, at its core, it's just a mathematical formula (algorithm) detailing a process.  Just as mathematics cannot be patented, neither could software.  Until a landmark appeals case changed all that, describing a computer program as a "process" as if it created a new machine by its very existence. In a very short amount of time, software patents became 1/3 of the total patents filed annually in the U.S.  They take up that much (or more) of the court load in litigation as well.  Patents for absurd things like "purchase kiosks" have been stretched to cover nearly all of e-commerce while patents on everyday arrays of information, taught to every programming student in college, are manipulated in such a way that they become a "process" and are patented. Companies now create patents, not to secure their innovations, but ...