Ever wonder why all the jurists all over the world have not stumbled upon such a simple and elegant definition? Herein lies just one problem: your definition of software patents may also include:

- Control systems for automotive, industrial and robotic systems.

- Signal processing methods for digital communications, audio processing, speech processing, image processing, video processing, automated control systems, and so on.

- Microcode in processors

- Embedded firmware in appliances and devices.

- Mechanical watch designs. They are simply mechanical implementations of algorithms.

- Digital circuits, chips and hardware that implements any of the above.

The software / hardware equivalence makes simple definitions impossible.

> Which does tell you something, doesn't it?

It could tell me many things, depending on what assumptions I may apply. Let's see how many you disagree with.

- The majority of software startups are not doing anything particularly technically innovative.

- The (vast) majority of the software industry as a whole is not doing anything particularly technically innovative.

- Patents are expensive to apply for and get, something a startup can't often afford.

- Patents don't provide enough protection for software products anyway.

(The last two are actually borne out by the study.)

> query whether the VCs are interested in patents vs. interested in them as a method for weeding out uncommitted startup founders.

Why wonder when there are studies on the subject? It's called "signaling". Of course VCs have no interest in IP itself, only what it means for their ROI. But if there's no funding, there's no startup, let alone innovation, so for many founders it's a necessary evil.

> Because if software startups aren't getting many software patents, but the number of software patents being issued keeps going up, guess who is.

Again, why guess when there are studies :-) If you believe James Bessen it's actually manufacturing, industrial and semiconductor firms. (See his "A generation of software patents" paper. Flawed study, IMO, but a useful starting point.) If the answer surprises you, maybe you should consider that "software patents" are not easy to define.