[mattmanser]

Do you have example patents to prove your point?

Why can't I just claim all software patents simple? You just have to be presented with the problem and have a smart person sit down long enough to come up with the solution. And often that's measured in hours or days once the problem is presented clearly. None of us are as smart as we think we are, even if the solution appears elegant.

They don't take thousands of different filament tests. Or massive amounts of research trials. No repeated prototype builds. Or anything that actually costs money apart from simply thought.

And worse still, there's often no other way to solve the problem than the patented way and as we see so often the idea is solved repeatedly by different people.

You might reasonably argue that realizing the problem exists is 90% of the work and that is expensive, but then you're really patenting a business processes just like one-click shopping or two factor authentication.