iPhylo: Patenting biodiversity tools

Software patents are a real pain!
Especially when claimed by members of a research community. I was quite shocked when I read Rod Page's post Patenting biodiversity tools .
Even worse to see that the same organizations - like uBio, which I was a big fan of - which make massive use of freely available information do apply for software patents!

By claiming a software patent they reserve the rights to prohibit others to use the same methods to handle biodiversity data and the uBio patent goes pretty far...

Biodiversity informatics is not the research area to earn the big money. So in this particular research context do we have to assume such patents aim to hinder scientific progress? Or what else can be the intention of such patents?