If I read them correctly the whole business of deciding if something is obvious is seriously broken in that it seems to be limited to combining claims from existing patents. This, of course, isn't even close to what "obvious" means to those "skilled in the art".

I, like many others, have run across so many patents that should not have been issued at all. This isn't limited to software. There are examples across disciplines, like the guy who got a patent for running wires inside clothing to connect devices or the company that got several patents on using pulse-width-modulation to control the intensity of LEDs to mix colors or most software patents.

In hardware I have seen lots of patents that cover the exact same thing. I have seen patents for things that don't work. And, patents for things that I knew had been available or done prior to the filing date.

I call these "implementation" patents rather than true inventions. The term refers to the fact that a modern skilled engineer or team of engineers would be more than capable of coming up with that or a myriad of other implementations when given a problem to be solved. That's what engineering is all about. Many engineers across time and distance are able to solve similar problems and end-up with similar solutions. This is what we are trained to do. This is also the part of the human and other animals: the use of our brains to solve problems.

It seems that the patent system ought to be reformed in such a way that the rules recognize who we are, what we are taught, what we do, what we are capable of and, in general, the fact of knowledge acceleration.

Today it should be exceedingly hard to receive a patent on just about anything. Patents should be reserved for true invention and not implementation. Today's environment is such that there's so much distributed knowledge across so many disciplines that most "inventions" that are patented are really cases of someone choosing a solution to a problem (not inventing one) and then hiring an attorney to try and monopolize it. Case in point: The Apple "slide to unlock" patent. Someone chose that solution from available knowledge. No sane person would suggest that this qualifies as an invention by any possible imaginative stretch. This was a UI decision that the lawyers at Apple got a patent for. They got a patent for, effectively, the analog of a mechanical slide switch made to look nice, nothing less. Not an invention, but they have a patent to say otherwise.

I am not against patents. I am against the granting of patents for non-inventions. Today the granting of a patent should almost be so rare as to make national news. Just a few per year. In fact, they should be rarer and rarer with time, to the point that those granted the few patents that should make it through the system per year would be invited to the White House to receive a Presidential Innovation award or some such thing.

It only stands to reason that, as technology advances, there will be less and less true inventions per year. Part of the problem was alluded to on the reddit thread: the USPTO makes money and Washington takes it away. Fix that and you might just fix the system.

Maybe the patent review process should be open to anyone. Yes, your competitors, anywhere in the world, get to examine and weigh-in. If an invention passes such a test it is probably deserving of a monopoly for twenty years. This also means that someone will really think hard before spilling all the beans in front of the entire world. Only a true invention, where other engineers go "This guy deserves a patent for this!" should be granted patents. And rightly so.