Google, Facebook, Red Hat and several other companies submitted a brief to the US Court of Appeals stating that combination of an abstract idea and a computer do not constitute a patent.

Bare-bones patents are because they claim abstract ideas when used on a computer or over the Internet. Because such patents merely divide an abstract idea into its component parts, the real work comes later, when others undertake the innovative task of developing concrete applications. That is the work that may be eligible for patent protection; merely claiming computer implementation of an abstract idea without reciting a particular means of computer implementation, is not.

It is easy to think of abstract ideas about what a computer or website should do, but the difficult, valuable, and often groundbreaking part of online innovation comes next: designing, analyzing, building, and deploying the interface, software, and hardware to implement that idea in a way that is useful in daily life. Simply put, ideas are much easier to come by than working implementations.