[JumpCrisscross]

Patents aren't granted for brilliance, merely novelty. This is good - novelty is objective, "brilliance" or "obviousness" are not. Thus it makes sense to default novelty to being non-obvious and deal with the exceptions on a case-by-case basis. The forum democratic societies do this in is the court system.

[esolyt]

Actually, novelty implies non-obviousness. So you can't possibly think novelty is objective but obviousness is subjective.