Lord Sainsbury's departure as science minister will be hailed by software developers. He was the instrumental in steering the ultimately failed European patent legislation. My lasting impression of him will be trying to explain to a packed room of developers at the DTI Conference Centre on the subtleties of software patents.

At times the conference broke down into pure panto, for instance:

Lord Sainsbury: Is the advice I gave to the patent office wrong?

The floor, altogether: Yes!

A single voice from the floor: I am not anti-Microsoft, but the fact is that in this industry there is one major monopolist and you are in the business of granting monopolies and anyone who knows their misbehaviour in the past knows that there is a grave risk the work of many people in this room would become worthless. [The proposed patent system] could be abused.

Lord Sainsbury: Is it abused now?

The floor, altogether: Yes!

And later, from the floor: We can’t afford patents

Lord Sainsbury: Is it a big problem at the moment?

The floor, altogether: Yes!

And so on. You could almost imagine the Widow Twanky creeping around behind him in wrinkled stockings. To be fair, Lord Sainsbury did briefly manage to get a friendly laugh out of the crowd when someone mentioned shopping basket patents. "Now you're getting into an area I can understand" quipped the science minister, which would have been really would have been funny if it weren’t so tragic.