That some of the biggest also dominate the Software Patent Institute makes it not surprising that the SPI is a fraud. Everything still for the most part. Optics is also becoming popular, with the camera and copier companies getting lots of software patents. Quantum Computing 6 Java 6 Year 2000 Topics slipping in the ranks include music, education, word processing, and artificial reflecting industry trends. Based on filings, my rough estimate is that there are twice as many Japanese software patents as there are US, though the Japanese patents tend to be these short, low number of claims, patents.
China is a big unknown, with more patents than Japan.
All together, as we enter the next century, there should be about 300,000 active software patents around the world. About the only thing interesting here is that IBM uses lots of patent firms - partly because of its high volume of patenting and partly because it is a good way to make it harder for other firms to find patent litigators to defend themselves. Some firms act as agents of foreign companies for filings before the US Patent Office, while others are known as assembly-line shops, i.e. these figures are more useful for quantity studies than quality studies. Some regional descriptors are included. I suppose the sadest thing of all is that the PTO isn't even keeping track of its own software patenting activities in this, or a similar, way.