I believe the report, authored by a scholar I've followed for years now, criticizes the *expanding* nature of patents (broad, ill-defined patents administered sub-optimally by the USPTO), and the American foreign policy agenda to impose its patent regime aborad.

The central argument of the report is that patent policy should hinge on a balance, rather than follow the presumption that more patents or stronger patents are good for innovation. I believe few software patent proponents will disagree with this, and the author does suggests that industrial sectors outside of technology are the strong supporters of the presumption.

Still, misunderstanding of the report by software patents opponents will naturally lead them to generlize its findings onto the software industry, which would ignore situations like KSR where many important technology players called for limitations to software patents.

Some of the report's policy recommendations do make sense, including: raising the standard of obviousness, target USPTO proceedures in helping the patent system, lowering the presumption of validity.

I do question though, various claims in the report. There is little discussion on anti-trust policy, even though lax anti-trust enforcement informs one of the central claims. Further, there is no evidence presented of reduced competition or reduced innovation resulting from the increased scope of patents.

I am disappointed the scholar finds that innovation levels have decreased ex ante/ex post since State Street. I will point out though that its hard to compare the software industry like this b/c the maturity of the industry and technologies may drive down costs of innovation, resulting in diminished growth in R&D spending. This in turn may enable smaller firms to enter the market.