> Under the EPC, and in particular its Article 52,[1] "programs for computers" are not regarded as inventions for the purpose of granting European patents,[2] but this exclusion from patentability only applies to the extent to which a European patent application or European patent relates to a computer program as such.
So, basically, you can't patent a program per se, but you can patent a "device" that uses the program. It is limited in scope
Which in practice seriously means that software patents describe the von Neumann architecture and talk about how the RAM and CPU communicate, when it's actually about a high level software solution. It's also always called a "System and method for XYZ", implying the system is part of the invention. Really look up some patents freely available online, they all do this which is plain ridiculous.
It can help some, but it would still be a problem because the trolls can go after the distributors. For example, the package would then have to be in the Debian non-free repo, rather than main.
If so, I wonder why more Open Source projects don't get based on European grounds and get immunity to the absurd state of things in the states.