Putting software patents number as synonymous with innovation is not right.

Business-Software patents number are symptoms of protectionism and central planning in the process of innovation(you pay the state, they give you monopolies over ideas).

Business and software patents make the big guys the masters and the rest slaves, when everything is becoming patented, from windows to clicks adding "on web applications" or "in mobile" to the super old idea.

In any case, it will be the quality, not the quantity what matters.