That is sadly untrue. There is a lot of confusion on this front because "software patents" are a specialized term of art that essentially means 'a patent that describes a procedure with no reference to a machine'. There was a period of time in the US when such patents were enforceable, but more recent cases have mostly changed that (Basically Diamond v Diehr in 1981 to CLS v Alice in 2014).
But all this is moot, because patents that apply to the software-implemented functionality of machines are common even without "software patents". I've followed more patents on software cases in _germany_ than anywhere else.
You're absolutely right about businesses. The US alone would be enough of a problem, but it isn't even the US alone that is an issue here.
Essentially all software patents describe the von Neumann architecture and make sure to reference machines for this exact reason. Even when it runs on commodity PCs, the patent will still take a ridiculous amount of space to discuss how the RAM is attached to the CPU etc.
For businesses, it's still a big deal most of the time because you usually can't really neglect the US market, but for academia, there is no such issues.