A lurking patent may come out of the woodwork of the Patent Office archives to bite any software developer or user. Pending patents applied for are not published. Nuisance suits will be started by patent holders and agents against creative sectors of the economy. The cost will be enormous. Cross-licensing of patents by corporations will occur.
Patent officers are incompetent to handle software patents.
They do not know what is prior art nor what is obvious in software. The legal system is incompetent to judge software patents. Software patents do not. Software patents cause developers to focus on patents, not products.