Many countries do not grant software patents so it is not likely
that IBM applied through PCT since a refusal in one country may
cause to patent to be refused in all countries.
Contrary to popular misconception, virtually all countries grant software patents. The problem is that people have applied the term "software patent" to USPTO-specific lameness like "one-click shopping", which really is outside the scope of traditional software patents. While most countries do not grant patents for this flavor of frivolousness, they do grant hard-theory algorithm design patents across virtually all types of machinery (including virtual machinery).
Traditional software design patents are structurally and functionally indistinguishable from chemical process patents, which are generally recognized as valid in most countries. Software patents have to have novelty that survives reduction to general process design (and the ARC algorithm looks like it qualifies) if you want most countries to grant it. The problem with USPTO and so-called "software patents" is that they allow people to patent what is essentially prior art with re-named variables. Chemical process patents are a good analogy because literally every argument used against "software patents" could be used against chemical process patents, which no one apparently finds controversial. What often passes for material "novel-ness" in software processes with the USPTO would never fly for chemical processes with the same USPTO. If someone invents a better pipe alloy for carrying chemical fluids, you cannot re-patent all chemical processes with the novelty being that you use a better type of pipe -- that change is not material to the chemical process, even if it improves the economics of it in some fashion. The only thing patentable would be the superior alloy design in the abstract.
Most of the lame "software patents" are lame because reduction to machine process design gives you something that is decidedly non-novel. In other words, the "novel-ness" is the semantic dressing-up of a non-novel engineering process.
cheers,
j. andrew rogers
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