Those of us in the US should not just dismiss this as not affecting them. Multinationals have long understood and used the strategy of trying to get whatever countries they can to pass legislation, getting a treaty signed codifying the standard, and then forcing legislation in the rest based on "international standards". The goal being to fight all of the difficult battles out of sight in the easiest place to fight them, then be able to fight them in the hard jurisdictions with the "weight of international opinion" on their side.

In this case I believe that the pattern is that software algorithms first were justified in the US based on patenting machines that implemented said algorithms. They then moved on to algorithms in general. Then there was pressure to have patents on software in Europe obstensibly to create a uniform environment since the US already had them. Strangely enough, though, in Europe the standard is aiming substnatially lower than the (already absurd) US limit. Finally the goal would be to have the lower standard pushed on the US as well.

This type of strategy has been pursued successfully in many areas. For instance it is why in the US the terms of copyrights well beyond anything dreamed of in the US Constitution...