Examples

Software patents range from very technical ones to patents on pure social methods. Current constraints in the European Patent Law make it very difficult to patent anything but "machines which include software, have a technical effect and industrial application". This leaves out of the game Internet Patents (except for payment device) and patents on education methods.

However, if software became patentable, it would become very easy to get patents on internet methods, education methods, consulting methods etc. trough a clever formulation of the patent application which encapsulates such methods into software techniques. No doubt the EPO will just let such patents circumvent the Law just as it did with software.

Patents on Software Techniques

A few examples of US patents on obvious techniques such as "XOR", "using null instructions to slow down a process" or "making corrections to a document using two additional different colors".

http://www.base.com/software-patents/examples.html

Internet Patents

A few examples of USPTO/EPO patents on obvious methods such as "one-click", "internet auctions", "business referral", "web database publication", "fork & ping" or "internet caching for WAP".

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Patents on Education Methods

A few examples of patents on mostly obvious education methods which would require schools to pay patent licenses to multinational companies in order to implement certain education practices based on computers.

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The FFII printable documents collection

This page includes a large collection of EPO software patents.

http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/prina/indexen.html