Designing possible software patenting regimes

There is no reason to believe that one unique software patenting regime can be designed, assuming that one exists at all. Thus many different regimes should be investigated. For each regime a set of questions has to be settled: what constitutes prior art, what is an infringement, how to define the particular 'patent speak' and its semantics, definition of the appropriate life cycles, and so on.

An important step might be to develop a collection op hypothetical software patents, i.e., rewrites and perhaps simplifications of the software development history in which known developments are ordered in such a way that some steps can convincingly be patented. The historical development of computer software might even be simulated in a game-like fashion in order to study the impact that some patents (had they existed) might have had.