I know that Dave probably won’t agree with me but now that the big guys are interested in weblogs, weblog software need patents. Search software has long been a patent rich environment, Google has them a plenty and one of the reasons why Overture bought AltaVista was because of their patents.
Weblog software is elegantly simple and depends on innovation that is easily copyable by the bigger companies. All the more need to protect and continue to foster this innovation.
Although patents are often seen to be an anathema to the collaborative world of the developer community, they do offer protection for smaller companies. Perhaps a compromise would be a patent system analogous to the Creative Commons approach to copyright which protects against exploitation whilst preserving the developer community ethos. In other words patents which are not infringed if they are used within open source or non-profit development.