[User23]

This sounds like the battery story. It used to be that batteries all came in cardboard casings. Then some clever fellow invented the metal battery casing like we use today and patented it. His patent was immediately infringed by all battery makers who claimed that the invention was "obvious." But they lost, because the judge rightly ruled that if it actually were obvious then why had everyone been encasing their battery cells in cardboard?

[WalterBright]

I take it you've never been on a surf board or a rowboat when the wind was up.

Take a watercraft ==> add a sail

Take a routine task ==> on a computer

and all that other patent nonsense.

[User23]

I know a halyard from a sheet, thank you. But a better example is that I've run outdoors on a windy day, which virtually every person ever has done at least once. And yet the overwhelming majority never thought to use a spinnaker on a skateboard. All new inventions, every single one, are one or more old inventions composed together. The novelty lies in the composition, not the components.

I share your antipathy toward software patents though. Mathematical theorems aren't patentable, and programs are just gussied up theorems so they shouldn't be either.

[WalterBright]

I just don't see as patent-worthy the concept of sticking a sail on something to allow the wind to push it. Sails have been around for thousands of years.

It's as lame as adding a wheel to something so it will roll instead of slide. Or putting a sign on something with instructions. Or putting an ON button on a device.