CP solves certainty best - jamming novel categories into three generic categories muddles the water and tanks certainty.

Current law is at best unclear. Judicial precedent is muddled and legislation has frequently been interpreted beyond its explicit meaning and guiding principles. This state of affairs is simply the product of the logical desire to fit a new human endeavour into the same legal framework that has governed novel endeavours from time immemorial. However, as the law has developed, its policy objective has become obscured by the push and pull of opposing lobbies in the debate. Demonstrating the resulting ambiguity of the current regime will involve looking in detail at the current state of the law. Observation of every facet of reasoning in this complex area of law is beyond the scope of this paper, however, and so with a view to giving an impression of that complexity and the bewilderment it causes, the most salient problems will be focused upon. It is not intended to examine trade secrecy law, given the more material and contentious issues surrounding the laws of copyright and patent. Suffice it to say, trade secrets, which prevent disclosure of works such as formulas and processes, are generally considered to be something of a dead duck in terms of software. This is due to the historical shift of emphasis in the industry from the practice of custom-designing and installing computers, where software secrets tended to be useful on only very few machines, to the sale of off-the-shelf computer programs, which operate on a wide range of hardware and can be running on thousands if not millions of general-purpose computers simultaneously.7 Considering whether the replacement of the current regime with a sui generis system is the best way forward will involve not just the (clearly important) objective of clarifying the law, but also the consideration of certain important real world factors. Given the omnipresence of software in our lives and its importance in the commercial world, such extra-legal factors will reveal some important considerations for the future of the legal protection of software. These will be considered further below.