New Zealand has adopted a law that intends to prevent issuance of new patents covering computer programs "as such".

I have not seen the exact text of this law. I hope that it is airtight. The European Patent Office is operating under a treaty which excludes "computer programs as such" from patentability, but has issued thousands of computational technique patents despite the words of the treaty on the grounds that they cover techniques, not programs as such.

Meanwhile, they failed to protect programs from lawsuits under the existing patents, as I've recommended,so it will take around 20 years for this to eliminate the problem.