The most recent illustration, of course, is Google's $12.5 billion , clearly a strategy for gaining the latter's considerable catalog of patents.

Also continuing to make news lately is the whole Lodsys debacle, in which both and are having to fight off--at great expense--the attacks this patent troll is making against developers for both Android and iOS.

Then, of course, there's the recent $4.5 billion collective purchase of by Apple, Microsoft, RIM and others, deliberately leaving Google in the dust.

Elsewhere in the mobile arena, meanwhile, we've learned that HTC is for every Android handset it sells, creating the crazy situation in which Linux-based Android has become a significant money-maker for Redmond.

The list goes on and on, but the bottom line is this: The mobile arena is becoming increasingly patent-focused, and that's a big problem. Now, more than ever, it's clear that software patents need to be abolished. Here are just a few reasons why.