[Victim]

I agree that the non obviousness theoretically required for patents is not generally enforced. I remember one of my professors telling a story about a friend who patented a damping system - the professor looks over the diagrams for a bit and goes "Did you just patent F= M x A?" "Yep"

I think part of the problem is that A) non obvious is supposed to be for professionals in that the field. I bet that people file patents in more fields than the patent office has trained people. And B), there are plenty of brilliant ideas that are of course perfectly obvious AFTER someone else thinks of them, but so few people actually do think of them. "Why didn't I think of that?" sort of ideas. Picking out the easy solution that everyone else is missing does seem like a worthwhile improvement. But that's a bit different from patenting some vague garbage and then going for a cash in lawsuit when someone is actually doing something.