It wasn't hard to see, even a few years ago that this is probably where things were heading in the high tech patents world. How many times right here on this website has it been reported that some company X is suing some company Y over some ridiculous patent. Or that some company Z had just been awarded a patent for the banana peeling by hand method. Drawings included.
It seems to me that anyone who has had an opportunity to talk to anyone in the know in the tech field can tell you that far far too many patents are handed out for things which are somewhat less then highly inventive, and in fact are often nothing more then "the most convenient way" of doing something.
Its one thing to hand out a patent for something truly unique, a solution to a difficult problem that had NO obvious answer and in fact took considerable effort to come up with a solution at all, a solution not easily arrived at by anyone trained in the art so to speak. Its quite another to hand out a patent for something for little more reason than someone came to the patent office with the idea first. Thats pure nonsense and as such, like all pure nonsense, if you use that pure nonsense to build a foundation for anything its going to be a foundation of errors and its going to lead to trouble eventually.
With all the years of ridiculous patent squabbles it was clear that if something didn't happen to straighten things out it would eventually lead to an all out patent war. And while wars may be won by men, its fought with weapons and in a patent war the patents are the weapons and its not hard to spot the arsenal stockpiles building up.
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