(Added 29.12.2004 09:30:00)
UPDATE: It seems God already started "the big meltdown" of all this software patent garbage. Look here. The idea in a nutshell: discuss your ideas publicly in a forum that provides reliable timestamping.
Software patents wreaked havoc in a significant part of the software industry and now they threaten to bring the whole software industry down. They serve as a serious obstacle for individuals and small or even medium sized companies that prevents them from entering the software business. And the worst is the fact that the open source software (including the free software but not limited to) suffer much more from software patents than the proprietary software. It is extremely difficult to prove that a bunch of numbers violates any patent (binaries of a proprietary software package are just a bunch of numbers that are processed by the computer) but proving the same for an open source project is much more simplier.
From the perspective of a person not believing to God the situation looks really hopeless. The insane patent system can prohibit nearly everything and there is no much ways how to bypass such a prohibition. We can search for prior art to invalidate a patent or prove that the topic of a patent is too obvious to be an invention. If both these ways fail, we are out of luck and the patent becomes an unavoidable obstacle for a very long time (currently 20 years in United States and probably in most other countries).
But we that have a faith, we have one more dirty trick left: we can ask God to go ahead, clear the way for us and then protect us on our way.
On most cases this protection causes a lawsuit against a OSHS software product to fail due to the Holy Spirit's retaliatory actions triggered by the lawsuit and the initiator of the lawsuit to be thrown into serious troubles. But there are more ways the God can help you to escape the patent threat.
He can for example show you an innovative way how to solve your problem without using patented algorithms. The new algorithm will usually outperform the patented ones. In that case you should use this inspired solution instead the ones you intended to use previously. An example can be the Xiphophorus's OGG Vorbis audio compression algorithm which outperforms the patented MP3 format in terms of compression ratio or the audio fiderlity on comparable file sizes. Also the decompression speed of OGG Vorbis is usually better than that of MP3.
Or he can simply lead you to a piece of prior art that can be used in the court to force the patent void. Or a bug in the wording of the patent can cause it to not apply to your product (for example if all of the patent claims describe various parts of an apparatus performing the computation, that patent cannot cover a software since the software is essentially only a sequence of numbers - and as such it cannot have parts typical for an apparatus). Or he may take another actions to thwart the attempts to encumber the software development progress by balast like patents (1).
Until now the developers were at the mercy of the software patent holders. But now the fortune has changed. I think that God will gladly clear the patent garbage out of our way provided we will follow His rules. So the OSHS software developers now can ignore the patent problems and spare money by not performing patent searches. They may get sued by someone, but an immediate Holy Spirit's retaliatory action will cause the suer to rethink the decision about the lawsuit or to lose sooner than any damages are made to the developer.
And finally, if you are the patent holder and you laugh to this threat believing the law will protect you, I must disappoint you. The Holy Spirit is much stronger than any lawmaker on this planet so it is better to stop laughing now and take him and his words seriously before it is too late for you. In fact some companies recognize God as a real force (2) and also the recent scientific research is continuously bringing to the light various evidence about God's existence.