What an insulting and unfounded statement. The arguments against software patents are strong and coherent. Intelligent people can disagree in good faith about the issue, but labeling the anti-software patent position a "completely vacuous cop-out" is unjustified rhetoric. So far as I can see, he doesn't really provide anything other than "math is hard, companies spend money on it" to support a contrary position, and the philosophical point that physical inventions are based on mathematical physics is true but outside the scope of legal reasoning.
The whole piece irritates me, because it is really just repeating the standard arguments for the utility of the patent system in general which all serious participants in the debate already know. The implication is that opponents of software patents are just too ignorant to know the basic issues - which may be true enough of Random Internet Commentators, but is certainly not true of the many experts who are opposed to software patents.