We have merchants out there who've just started doing on the Internet what's been done by phone for 20 years and think they should get a patent out of it. There isn't enough change in the art. I've dealt with mail order companies that had my address already - I'd just tell them my name and they'd take care of the rest. Those patents are obviously silly. When cookies were invented, it was implicit in the very concept that you'd store and retrieve this kind of information.
Prior art is a huge issue here.
I know one guy who works as a researcher for law firms, finding prior art for patents - and he finds it 95 percent of the time. So here we have 95 percent of software patents that aren't inventions at all. Get 'em out of there. That leaves the patents that actually do represent inventions. Here the question is how long a generation is in computer technology - as distinct from, say, mechanical engineering.