I think that is similar in Germany, with courts using the "software per se" as excuse to let any patent that mentions a computing device of some sort slip through. Your software runs on actual hardware and has to deal with finite memory, bandwidth and/or processing power? Patent granted/upheld!

> In the proceedings, the lawyers of both parties argued before the judge about complex technical details of the software, such as whether Whatsapp uses a technology on which Blackberry holds a patent when sending the entire "history" of a chat - i.e. the course of the chat - by e-mail to third parties. Or which parts of this process are executed by Whatsapps Software and which by the operating system iOS, for which Apple is responsible, not Facebook, but the manufacturer Apple.

From the deepl translation

It's complicated, The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ.

Canada has a weak interpretation of computers. From the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_Canadia...):

> Computers, software, or related terms do not appear anywhere in the Patent Act. Therefore, as with any other invention, to be patentable a computer-using invention must meet the general requirements for patentability of any invention as found in the Act.

> the "Invention" is defined in Section 2 of the Patent Act as:

> "[A]ny new and useful art, process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement in any art, process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter".[1]

> So, any invention must be new and useful. Inventions must also be non-obvious as provided in section 28.3.[2] Inventions must also fall into one of the five categories of patentable subject matter found in the definition of "invention" above. "

I've personally known people who have secured patents in Canada, and always wondered why they could (was a fairly simple media-manipulation task). The wiki article mentions that Amazon was able to secure a patent for their One Click product, while an oil processing company wasn't able to patent a system that would help measure locations for oil drilling. The court argued the math used to calculate locations, would, if extracted, be something a person could be a "mathematical formulae and a series of purely mental operations", and it "fell within the prohibition in the Patent Act[2] against patents for scientific principles or abstract theorems".

My point is it's all so grey. It seems that if you argue well enough, the court may just decide on that day to confirm the patent. It shouldn't be necessary to be provided examples, at all times, to deduce if a patent is necessary. Software patents go down the road of patenting script. You don't see people going about patenting poetry. Or even design patents on weird ascii art or the like. It's just not the format.