Even more venting about the concentrated incompetence (also commonly known as Federal Justice Minister) and the industry chancellor.
No, patents do not strengthen the willingness to innovate or the readiness to invest. They solely strengthen the position of large corporations with plenty of money in their war chest against smaller companies with less money in theirs. Enforcing patents has nothing to do with who is ultimately the inventor - but solely with who can afford a larger legal department and can sustain the longer legal battle.
After kicking patients in the teeth with the proposal to relieve the pharmaceutical industry, now comes the kick in the teeth to the mid-market software industry. Because it is precisely from this sector that innovations often come, yet as a rule they cannot afford all this patent wrangling without a big player backing them up.
And in the process, this dismantles Free Software, which eventually won't be allowed to implement anything anymore because every bit of nonsense gets blocked by stupid trivial patents.
At heise online news there is the original article.